Mis­man might look like your ordi­nary vil­lager, but the 59-year-old com­mu­nity fig­ure is respon­si­ble for trans­form­ing his bar­ren Cen­tral Java vil­lage of Selop­uro into Indonesia’s first cer­ti­fi­able sus­tain­able forest.

Before the 1980s, Selop­uro vil­lage, Batuwarno, Wono­giri, Cen­tral Java, was 646.5 hectares of stony ground with lit­tle veg­e­ta­tion. Cou­pled with an annual water cri­sis, the unpro­duc­tive area meant its pop­u­la­tion lived in poverty.

Today, how­ever, more than 250 hectares of the vil­lage have become forests, almost 70 hectares are now rice fields. There are a lit­tle over 90 hectares of gar­dens, 250 hectares of non-irrigated fields, 240 hectares of state forests and 4 hectares of other areas.

The lush forests in Selop­uro have been rec­og­nized as a Sus­tain­able Com­mu­nity Based For­est Man­age­ment (PHBML) zone. In 2004, the non­profit agency Indone­sian Eco­la­bel Insti­tute (LEI) estab­lished Selop­uro forests as Indonesia’s first cer­ti­fied sus­tain­able forests. While pre­serv­ing the ecol­ogy, Selop­uro com­mu­nity forests offer eco­nomic ben­e­fits with­out aban­don­ing local culture.

Mis­man is behind the suc­cess of Selopuro’s replant­ing drive. It is through the ini­tia­tive, patience and strug­gle of this father-of-three that locals have become envi­ron­men­tally con­scious and vol­un­tar­ily replanted their home vil­lage to reap greater rewards.

As a sec­ondary school stu­dent in 1968, Mis­man was dis­mayed by the denuded envi­ron­ment of his vil­lage and the dire poverty of its pop­u­la­tion. With­out replant­ing, Selop­uro was infer­tile and only cas­sava, an annual and low-yielding crop, could be grown. Water springs could not be found and a yearly water cri­sis plagued the area, forc­ing locals to spend a third of their time search­ing for water.

Of the thou­sands of vil­lage res­i­dents, only Mis­man and a neigh­bor attended sec­ondary school (SMP).

“Most of them were just mak­ing ends meet so they didn’t give much thought to study­ing,” said Misman.

Inspired by the lyrics of a folk song, Ibu Per­tiwi (Moth­er­land) that describes the nat­ural wealth of the coun­try, Mis­man, now the hus­band of Sum­inem, 51, became con­vinced that a green moun­tain­ous zone would be a bless­ing to its com­mu­nity members.

The SMP stu­dent began to real­ize his dreams of green­ing his bar­ren vil­lage. Walk­ing home from school, Mis­man took the trou­ble to find seedlings of plants grow­ing wild, which he later planted in neat rows and nur­tured on his par­ents’ 2-hectare plot of land.

“It was a self-help endeavor as I had no money to buy seedlings, so I trekked up and down the hills to find them,” he recalled. Mean­while, Mis­man was cam­paign­ing for replant­ing. In the begin­ning of his strug­gle, he was fre­quently scorned because fel­low vil­lagers would not believe that grow­ing trees could pro­mote their wellbeing.

“They said I was nuts, doing it just for fun. They couldn’t grasp the idea of replant­ing for eco­nomic improve­ment,” he pointed out. Yet he car­ried on his one-man cam­paign when­ever he went out and met peo­ple, appar­ently bor­ing them. Res­i­dents gath­er­ing for some pur­pose would even dis­perse as Mis­man approached to avoid his green­ing “lectures”.

Undaunted, Mis­man kept moti­vat­ing local peo­ple until some of them fol­lowed his exam­ple. Six years later, in 1976, Mis­man man­aged to form eight green­ing groups and for the first time received 4,000 seedlings in aid.

“Now, there’s no need to urge neigh­bor­hood peo­ple to grow trees. Res­i­dents will­ingly do so and even buy seedlings them­selves because refor­esta­tion is more prof­itable,” Mis­man noted.

To com­pen­sate for every tree cut down, they pre­pare 25 seedlings and care for the young plants to ensure their growth. The hilly lime­stone area can nor­mally be planted with corn as an annual crop, pro­duc­ing 1 ton per hectare on aver­age, or worth about Rp 7 mil­lion (US$762) assum­ing the sell­ing price is Rp 7,000 per kilogram.

If the same area is planted with sen­gon trees, for instance, a hectare will pro­duce 500 trees, which in five years sell at Rp 800,000 to Rp 1 mil­lion per tree, thus yield­ing far big­ger prof­its on aver­age. To meet short-term needs, sec­ondary crops or tubers can be grown as an inter­crop among the trees.

The ver­dant com­mu­nity forests in Selop­uro have had a vast eco­nomic impact on the rural community.

New water springs have emerged and their abun­dant sup­ply has freed vil­lagers from water short­ages, caused a spread of grass­land and a rapid growth in cat­tle breed­ing. The new springs aris­ing in the post-greening period have been uti­lized since 2000.

Through col­lec­tive efforts, locals have drilled wells and installed an elec­tric pump to raise the water and chan­nel it into a reser­voir at a higher level for dis­tri­b­u­tion, through the force of grav­ity, to hun­dreds of vil­lage homes. Based on vil­lage com­mu­nity data, 16 new water springs are still to be tapped.

The green com­mu­nity forests and lav­ish new water sources have set the local econ­omy in motion.

Exten­sive graz­ing areas sup­ply suf­fi­cient cat­tle feed, result­ing in fast-developing cat­tle breed­ing activ­i­ties, with each house­hold rais­ing a cow and three to five goats.

Employ­ment is increas­ing too. Ben­e­fit­ing from the for­est waste, in the form of teak and mahogany branches of 5 cen­time­ters in diam­e­ter, vil­lagers have started pro­duc­ing hand­i­crafts. In coop­er­a­tion with a local fur­ni­ture firm, the prod­ucts of Selop­uro are enter­ing the export market.

“Now, with the forests thriv­ing, I don’t want to see any more for­est destruc­tion. I’ve seen the trauma of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age; it led to dis­as­ters and impov­er­ish­ment,” con­cluded Misman.

Slamet Susanto, The Jakarta Post, Wono­giri, Cen­tral Java | Tue, 06/08/2010 8:53 AM.
Source: Jakarta Post.