Nestle’s Project RiLeaf aims to change the fate of our forests, writes Kerry-Ann Augustin
“YOU’VE got to clear the land first before you start digging,” Kertijah Abdul Kadir reminds me before handing me a parang with a sinister smile on her face. Kertijah is the coordinator for Project RiLeaf, a 3-year riverside reforestation initiative by food manufacturing giant Nestle. “And don’t forget, you need to dig deep enough to plant these trees there,” she says pointing to at least 20 saplings cradled by soil in black grow bags.
Her sentence felt like it added another layer of heaviness to what I was already wearing in Sabah’s sweltering heat - a hat, a long sleeve shirt beneath a long sleeved windbreaker, long pants tucked in long socks, tucked in anti-leech socks, tucked in rubber boots. I am layered like its winter because we are after all in the jungles of Lower Kinabatangan, where creepy-crawlies I never knew existed form part of the area’s mega biodiversity that surpasses that of any other spot in South East Asia.
I am sweeping the parang across straggly branches, spouting weeds and stubborn long grass, shuffling between digging the ground with a shovel and my hands and gently tucking the baby trees into its new beds. But the arduous task of planting these trees today may just be what our planet needs to survive tomorrow.
INTO THE WILD
I am travelling from Sandakan to Sukau with oil palm plantations to my left and right while Wati, who runs Myne Resort in Kampung Bilit entertains us with stories of the wild. “Once I was hanging out at the resort’s jetty and one of the workers gestured to me to get my feet out of the water quickly. It was only after I got my feet out I saw the crocodile near where my feet were! It was just chilling there you know,”
Just chilling? That is how casual people who live around Kinabatangan are with the wild creatures. At dawn the next day, I hop onto a boat that takes me along Kinabatangan’s waters. I don’t need Wati’s story as a reminder to refrain from dipping my fingers into the water as the boat cruises along — I see a crocodile casually sauntering along the riverbanks. The boatman is kind enough to stop a little closer to the reptile for me to appreciate its scales of black and white (although looking at a crocodile which is 2.1m in length actually made me more appreciative of the fact that I was on the boat).
The mist of the morning meanders through the trees while the calls of the crickets and chirping of the birds complement the serenity of the river at 6am. As the sky starts to light up, I see proboscis monkeys and macaques roaming freely, hornbills and other birds enjoying a morning glide. I am of course, looking at the water trying to spot more crocodiles. But instead, I see a lot of something else which I mistake for crocodiles. I see timber; logs of dead wood floating carelessly on the riverbanks.
WOODEN HEARTS
“The trees have been chopped. Chopped down here, chopped down there,” Suhaili B.Adri, the Imam of Kampung Sukau says with a tint of frustration in his voice. “Because of deforestation, the animals have no where to go so they come out here to the riverbank to look for food,” he says referring to Kinabatangan’s Asian pygmy elephants who have been spotted on the fringes of the forest. “Last time you could only hear them,”
The desperate attempt in search for food by the animals and the floating logs are like scars — they serve as a reminder of an industry that caused so many wounds that we are still trying to fix it till this day. There is no doubt many gained livelihoods from it — some even went on to secure fat Swiss bank accounts. But for most parts, Sabah, its people and its environment lost a lot more than some gained.
“Timber logging was once an active economic activity in Kinabatangan area back in 1960’s to late 1970’s. But the unsustainable logging caused many of the timber species to go extinct. When that happened, the quality of forest vegetation and habitat for wildlife was also affected,” says Kertijah who has been working on reforestation in Lower Kinabatangan since 2004.
CASH CROPS
Forest reservations in Sabah (then British North Borneo) begin in the 1920s. But the timber boom of the ‘70s led to de-reservation of many areas as well as widespread illegal logging. According to a special report by the Sabah Forestry Department, the numbers for primary lowland and dipterocarp forest plunged from 2.8 million hectares in 1975 to just 0.3 million hectares in 1995.
Last year, news site Responding to Climate Change (RTCC) with the help of Carnegie Institution of Science revealed that 80 percent of the rainforests in Sabah and Sarawak continue to be ravaged by logging. In May this year, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) reported that deforestation continues in the Heart of Borneo (HoB), an area for conservation that Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei all agreed on in 2007. WWF have also stated that the environmental changes caused by ongoing deforestation will have severe impacts on the people relying on the watershed and rivers within the HoB, which includes the people of Kinabatangan.
Of course, logging isn’t the only reason why Kinabatangan’s people and ecology are suffering. With 1.36 million hectares of oil palm are planted in Sabah, the East Malaysian state is the third largest producer of palm oil in the world.
Dr Benoit Goossens director of the Danau Girang Field Centre in a recent interview explained that oil palm planted without a buffer or planted on the riparian zone poses a threat to the enviromnent as pesticides and herbicides will likely end up in the river.
“We rely on the Kinabatangan river, all of us — the environment, the animals and the people living here,” Suhaili who has spent his whole life in Sukau confides. “In terms of making a living, it’s getting more difficult for us villagers. When it rains, the run-off from the lands gets swept into the river and the riverbank erodes,”
RILEAF FOR RELIEF
Yong Lee Keng, a veteran planter who now heads Nestle’s Project RiLeaf puts it into perspective “The whole thing about Project RiLeaf is to bring relief to the Kinabatangan River from heavy sedimentation, chemical fertilisers, degraded and broken riparian forests,”
The reforestation of trees along the Lower Kinabatangan is part and parcel of the company’s Creating Shared Value (CSV) initiative, the other being sustainable oil palm — both elements of which the brand relies on greatly. The project, funded by the Sime Darby Foundation involves planting trees along the riparian zone or the riverbank which was previously used as timber loading spots. The reforested areas will become wildlife corridors for the animals, reducing the rate of the current human-wildlife conflict. The newly restored zones also acts as a buffer which filters pollutants like soil sediments and chemical fertiliser run-offs.
“Think of it like putting back natural filters so we can prevent future pollution,” Kertijah explains.
But reforestation is not just about re-planting trees — it’s about bringing people together and creating awareness. “Personally, I have observed some changes in behaviour of the community towards protecting the forest, especially for those who work directly in conservation-based projects. They can see the changes and give their opinions on why the environment is important to them,” says Kertijah who works closely with local communities like Habitat and Komuniti Anak Pokok Kinabatangan (Kapok), from whom Nestle buys the saplings from. “The changes may not be comprehensive enough yet, but I believe that eventually, the community will start to see the reason they still have their forests is because of their own efforts in protecting it,”
Immy Ooi, Nestle Malaysia’s corporate responsibility manager elaborates: “The Kapok members find indigenous seeds, plant them in grow bags and take care of them. When we do reforestation work, we buy these saplings from them and take them to the riparian zones for planting,”
ONE TREE AT A TIME
In her tiny office, Kertijah shows me a giant map on her office wall, dotted with markings indicating the zones in which they have planted and aim to plant more trees. “By end of this project, we hope to be able to cover more than 2,400 hectres of forests in our reforestation efforts,” she reveals. “There are also more and more reforestation projects coming in for Kinabatangan be it from the tour operators, plantation, outside NGOs, government departments and even community groups themselves. Although they are mostly small-scale, but this is a good indication that these efforts are spreading awareness,”
I ask Kertijah how long it will take for Kinabatangan to return to its former glory.
“Frankly, I do not know. I don’t think anyone knows. But personally, I have hopes that the Kinabatangan river quality will improve. If I were to use cancer as an analogy,” Kertijah pauses and continues “In general, the river is in stage two to three. There is still hope, but it takes everyone’s commitment to be able to achieve success.”
Well, pass me some shovels and some saplings, please. It’s time for more planting.