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On a rainy day in April 2018, I took a small speedboat along the Kapuas River in West Kalimantan, Indonesia to three tidal swamp villages, where residents protested the expansion of oil palm plantations on their farmland and settlements .
The government allowed a palm oil company to establish and expand plantations in the area. The company cleared and drained important carbon sink peatlands and planted oil palm trees on the land used by villagers for decades. In this process, it completely ignored its actions and violated the land rights of the villagers, causing the village women who mainly cultivated the land to lose their livelihoods and contributing to the global climate crisis.
Villagers have little information about the beginning or end of the oil palm plantation and how or where it overlaps with their land. Women have less information than men, and there are fewer ways to negotiate their losses directly with companies. During my visit, these women told me that when they started protesting the expansion of palm plantations, the company only met with men in the village to discuss possible compensation issues.
Losing livelihoods makes rural women more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, because climate change affects their food security and sources of income. They will face more difficulties in overcoming or adapting to its impact, and will become one of the worst-hit countries.
There are many similar stories all over the world. Women strive for recognition and respect for their land and property rights every day. At the same time, the government failed to prioritize women’s participation in the formulation and implementation of an ambitious climate action plan to achieve the goal of raising the temperature by no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the most serious impacts, including impacts on land rights and women’s rights .
When formulating an emergency climate action plan, we also need to consider how gender discrimination contributes to environmental degradation and weakens forest governance initiatives, and how women still bear the brunt of local environmental hazards and the impact of climate change. We need to ensure that women and climate-affected communities have power and voice.
Women often cannot meaningfully participate in decision-making around the natural resources (such as water, forests, and land) in which they live. Most rural women cannot obtain and control natural resources on an equal basis with men in the community.
This exclusion can be devastating for women and their families. Globally, large-scale land transactions and commercial agriculture, touted as development opportunities, have exacerbated poverty and food insecurity in local communities. Forests are cleared or enclosed, restricting foraging. Villagers cannot get income from farmland for livelihood and crop sales. These practices have a disproportionate impact on professional women, who are forced to perform manual labor on commercial farms or plantations, or migrate to urban areas in search of work.
At the same time, women had to combine their working hours on the plantation with the work of fetching water, food, and caring at home, which increased their workload without fair remuneration. Climate change will only make these tasks more difficult and further exacerbate gender inequality.
People in the villages I visited in West Kalimantan admitted that when the plantations arrived, some people had found paid jobs. But they complained that when they were able to live on their own land and into the forest, they had no other choice to support their family. Some villagers said that the employment conditions are unfair and it is difficult to achieve their daily work goals.
Sometimes, even if only one family member is employed and paid by the plantation, the entire family (including children) must work to achieve the company’s goals. Bethari is a 44-year-old woman. She has an 8-month-old baby. She told me: “My husband works on a plantation. His sons and I must help him achieve his goals. I hold the child and cannot She stays at home.”
Usually, the expansion of plantations will lead to environmental degradation and further harm the lives and health of residents. Palm oil companies dug huge ditches to drain the peatland in preparation for planting. Their behavior degrades the peat structure and surrounding environment, and releases large amounts of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide) from the carbon stored in the peat soil for centuries into the atmosphere. Excessive drainage of peatlands was a key factor in the 2015 forest fires in Indonesia.
If the government does not monitor how companies acquire land and manage their operations, people and the immediate environment are at risk. When it comes to peatlands and forests, we all suffer because the carbon emissions caused by the destruction of these carbon sinks have contributed to the global climate crisis.
After visiting the villages affected by oil palm cultivation for a week, I returned to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan Province. I watched the mangroves swiftly passing by along the banks of the Capuas River. I can’t help feeling angry because the Indonesian government has not done enough to protect the land and people. Many mangroves may also be cleared to make way for plantations.
Indonesia is just one of many countries that need to step up their efforts to safeguard the land rights of local communities, ensure gender equality and protect the environment. The government needs to uphold its commitment to drastically reduce emissions, ensure that strategies to protect carbon sinks such as forests and peatlands also protect the land rights and other human rights of rural communities, and ensure that women meaningfully participate in natural resource and climate decision-making at all levels.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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