- Interviews in Kwala Langkat, a fishing village in Indonesia’s Langkat district, along the Malacca Strait, suggest fisheries incomes have collapsed after local elites ripped out a mangrove ecosystem to establish a new oil palm plantation.
- In June, Mongabay reported that police had arrested three residents of Kwala Langkat village in connection with alleged criminal damage to a structure used on the oil palm plantation.
- More than a third of the world’s population today lives within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of the coast, a more than 50% increase in absolute terms compared with 30 years ago.
LANGKAT, Indonesia — Syafi’i has spent three decades picking up the crabs scurrying along the coast here in Langkat district on Sumatra Island’s northeastern coast, a reliable trade that provided first for his children, then his grandchildren.
The income from collecting the decapods enabled Syafi’i to comfortably pay school fees and build a home for his family in the village of Kwala Langkat. Most of the village’s fishing community here along the Malacca Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, used to be considered relatively prosperous.
Today, however, the villagers say shifts in the local environment, compounded by inflationary pressures, have diminished that staunch coastal economy.
“We can’t rely on crabs anymore,” Syafi’i told Mongabay Indonesia.
Around a decade ago, the mangrove forest in Kwala Langkat village deteriorated after an investor began work to a clear what he claimed was a 100-hectare (247-acre) concession for oil palm cultivation.
Syafi’i is one of hundreds of people in Langkat who say their fisheries have collapsed due to mangrove destruction, and that this abrupt change in land use risks loading communities with further problems.
“This mangrove forest must be protected,” he said. “If it isn’t protected, seawater will enter our settlements.”
Dependent claws
The global coastal population has surged from 1.6 billion to 2.5 billion people in just three decades. More than three-quarters of that number live in low- and middle-income countries like Indonesia.
Research across much of the world shows the fisheries and mangroves that sustain these communities are becoming strained, a process accelerated by increasingly inhospitable oceans that are becoming warmer and more acidic.
This is especially true in Indonesia, an archipelagic nation home to 45 of the world’s 75 mangrove species over an area of 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres). This amounts to more than one-fifth of global mangrove forests, according to Wetlands International.
These coastal and riverine forests store up to five times more carbon than terrestrial forests, and are vital for sustaining the marine ecosystems that support coastal communities. Yet research shows around half of Indonesia’s mangroves have been damaged or destroyed to make way for aquaculture and plantations.
Although climate change and population shifts are playing an increasingly significant role in the world’s coastal communities, Syafi’i blames mangrove destruction for the collapse of his village’s crab economy.
Earlier this year, Mongabay reported on the arrest of local fishers in Kwala Langkat, including Syafi’i, on suspicion of criminal damage in connection with the 100-hectare oil palm plantation in the village. The plantation had been established land on zoned as forest area, where oil palm estates are prohibited by law yet in practice are common.
To help mend the community’s broken fisheries, Syafi’i became a member of a community group accredited by the local government to rehabilitate coastal mangroves, a feeding ground for crabs and other species.
Another resident, Ilham, reported the deforestation to North Sumatra’s provincial police and persistently followed up on the case. He was later arrested and held without charge after a confrontation on the plantation.
Syafi’i said he attended a protest outside the home of a man local people believed to be behind the destruction of the Kwala Langkat mangroves.
Adi Yoga Kemit, a lawyer for the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, a human rights NGO known as KontraS, said their investigation had found that local people had endured threats and intimidation by gangsters hired by people behind the plantation.
On May 11, police arrested Syafi’i while he was fishing. He was detained on remand in the Langkat district police precinct before he was later released without charge due to a lack of evidence.
“I’m the one who is protecting the mangrove forest, so how come I was arrested?” Syafi’i said. “I didn’t destroy anyone’s home, I was stopping the community from destroying it.”
He claimed the complaint against him had been filed by the person behind the oil palm plantation.
Shell trade
Tajruddin Hasibuan, who sits on the advisory board of the Indonesian Traditional Fishermen’s Union, attributed the decline in the crab population to pollution as well as the dearth of breeding and spawning areas.
Fishers have reported persistently declining catches going back several years due to increased competition for resources, Tajruddin said.
Some have responded to this change by taking casual work, usually as day laborers on building sites or factory floors.
The Langkat district government said it was aware of the challenges facing local fishers, and that officials were working to make the trade more resilient.
“We are helping with the procurement of fishing equipment, namely crab traps and the provision of three-inch crab nets,” said Ricardo Lumumba Simanulang, who runs the aquaculture section at the Langkat fisheries department.
A pernicious risk of this economic deterioration is the potential to entrench barriers hindering social mobility.
Children are increasingly dropping out of school because fishing families can’t afford the costs associated with continuing education to high school, locals say.
Few here say they can picture a viable career change without local job creation or sufficient access to capital.
“We marginalized people can only survive,” Syafi’i said.
A good day with fair weather might see Syafi’i return to port with 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of shellfish.
“In the past we could get a million rupiah [around $60] from one trip out to sea,” Syafi’i said, before adding that those days were gone.
A weak catch today, however, might yield just a single kilo (2.2 lbs). After the middlemen take their cut, this would leave Langkat’s fishers with as little as 50,000 rupiah, about $3, before accounting for fuel and other costs. (The minimum monthly wage in Langkat district is just over 2.94 million rupiah, about $185.)
Anecdotal testimony indicates a large share of fishers in Langkat are increasingly taking on risky loans from local buyers, in the hope that a better catch in the future will pay off the debt.
“We have no choice but to dig a hole to fill in another hole,” Syafi’i said.
Banner image: Syafi’i hunts for shellfish in the Malacca Strait. Image by Ayat S. Karokaro/Mongabay Indonesia.
This story was first published here in Indonesian on Nov. 2.
Sumatran Indigenous seafarers run aground by overfishing and mangrove loss
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