by Jessica Sherman, Greengrants Intern
On the drawing board since the 1980s, Lore Lindu Hydroelectric Power Project is the Indonesian government’s response to a growing need for electricity for the island of Sulawesi. The project would flood as much as 10,000 hectares of Lore Lindu National Park and displace an estimated 4,000 indigenous people living on ancestral lands. In the 1990s the World Bank decided to back the project, giving it additional momentum.
Lore Lindu National Park is home to a wide diversity of plants and animals, including 328 species of birds, 117 species of reptiles, 68 species of freshwater fish, and more than 5,000 plant species. Many of these species have yet to be studied. The area was declared a biosphere reserve by the Indonesian government and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1978 and it is widely considered to be one of the biologically richest places on the planet.
Lore Lindu is also home to many groups of indigenous Indonesians. While Westerners do not usually associate national parks with human inhabitants, the 60,000 people who call Lore Lindu home were there well before the park had its boundaries demarcated by the Indonesian government in 1993. There are more than 60 villages within the 229,000 hectare park, each with a rich cultural history that is evident in huge stone megaliths scattered throughout the area that are thought to date back hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years. The people here live subsistence lifestyles and depend on the parkís natural resources for survival. The lake and river systems, which would be profoundly affected by the dam, are extremely important to the park’s inhabitants, providing a major source of protein in the form of native fish life.
The dam would have many negative consequences. Lake Lindu’s water levels would rise, leading to the displacement of several villages and the flooding of good alluvial soils used for agriculture. Habitat fragmentation could have devastating effects on Lore Linduís spectacular flora and fauna. New roads would be constructed through pristine areas of forest habitat, opening up new areas for colonization by an increasing number of migrants from south Sulawesi, Java and Bali that settle in the park.
Yayasan Tanah Merdeka (the Free Land Foundation) has worked for many years with local people to stop the dam. An early success came in 1996 when the Indonesian government decided to cancel the project. This turned out to be only a temporary victory, however, when the Central Sulawesi government announced in 2000 that it was revisiting the idea.
With the help of a $5,000 grant from Global Greengrants Fund in 2001, Yayasan Tanah Merdeka helped people living in the park begin to organize. In 2002, they organized a three-day planning workshop with more than 100 community leaders attending. The group also has helped train ten community leaders in land tenure research techniques, and a land tenure agreement was signed by twenty-two communities. Communities presented research findings to the Central Sulawesi government to help document traditional land ownership patterns and the devastating effects that the dam would have on park communities.
Land tenure research also promises to help solve problems resulting from increased population pressures on the land. As migrants colonize park lands, indigenous peoples are powerless to protect their traditional territories. Yayasan Tanah Merdeka has called on the government to develop a land conservation management model “based on the agrarian interests of the communities in the area.”
In 2002, the government announced that it would once against put off dam construction in the park. This is a huge success for Yayasan Tanah Merdeka and the people of Lore Lindu. The governor commended the work done by NGOs in protest of the dam, recognizing that the specific threats to land and livelihood that would be imposed by dam construction are, for now, not worth the benefits that the dam would bring. But the governor also urged NGOs active in protesting the dam to “think realistically and look at the electricity shortage in Central Sulawesi.” It may only be a matter of time before plans are dusted off once again, but the ongoing work of groups like Yayasan Tanah Merdeka will help ensure that the people of Lore Lindu have the tools they need in order to make sure that their voices are heard.