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| The argument that the Dayak are the most reliable guardians of Borneo’s forests does not rest on nostalgia. Doc. the writer. |
By Rangkaya Bada
Borneo’s rainforests do not disappear evenly. From satellite images, the pattern is stark: vast blocks of land scraped bare by industrial logging, mining and oil palm plantations, broken by pockets of deep green that stubbornly remain. Those surviving forests are rarely accidental. More often than not, they overlap with territories long inhabited and governed by Indigenous Dayak communities.
This is not a romantic claim. It is an empirical one. Studies by conservation groups, universities and even government agencies repeatedly show that forest cover is better preserved where Indigenous land rights are recognized. In Borneo, that reality has a name, and it is Dayak.
For generations, the Dayak peoples of the island’s interior have lived with the forest not as an abstract “resource” but as a living system that regulates food, water, culture and memory. Their survival has depended on restraint as much as use. Where outsiders often see idle land, the Dayak see rotation, recovery and balance.
As deforestation accelerates elsewhere on the island, the contrast has become harder to ignore.
An Economy Built on Restraint, Not Extraction
Dayak land management does not resemble the extractive models that dominate modern development discourse. It is slower, smaller and deliberately limited. Shifting cultivation, for instance, is often misunderstood as destructive. In reality, it relies on long fallow periods that allow soil and forest to regenerate. A field cleared today is not abandoned but rested, sometimes for decades, before being reused.
Agroforestry systems mix fruit trees, medicinal plants, rubber and timber species in ways that mimic natural forest structure. The result is land that remains productive without collapsing into monoculture. Rivers are protected by customary rules that forbid clearing near their banks. Sacred groves and ancestral burial forests are strictly off-limits.
These practices are enforced not by police or permits but by adat, the customary law that governs Dayak society. Violations carry social and spiritual consequences that are often more powerful than formal sanctions.
Contrast this with industrial land use. Once a forest is converted to oil palm or mined for coal, ecological recovery is slow or impossible. The land produces a single commodity, vulnerable to price shocks and environmental stress. The Dayak system, by comparison, spreads risk and sustains diversity.
When Forest Protection Is Criminalized
Despite this track record, Dayak communities are frequently portrayed as obstacles to development. In some cases, they are criminalized for practicing livelihoods that predate the modern state. Farmers are accused of illegal burning. Villages are labeled squatters on land they have occupied for centuries.
The irony is difficult to miss. Large-scale concessions that clear tens of thousands of hectares are often approved with minimal scrutiny, while Indigenous land use is framed as a problem to be managed or eliminated. This imbalance reflects a deeper issue: the failure to recognize that conservation and Indigenous rights are not competing agendas but mutually reinforcing ones.
Where Dayak land tenure is insecure, forests are more vulnerable. Once customary boundaries are ignored, land becomes available for speculative acquisition. Conflicts follow, often accompanied by deforestation, pollution and social dislocation.
Internationally, this pattern is well documented. From the Amazon to the Congo Basin, Indigenous territories have proven to be some of the most effective barriers against forest loss. Borneo is no exception.
Evidence, Not Myth
The argument that the Dayak are the most reliable guardians of Borneo’s forests does not rest on nostalgia. It rests on data. Satellite analyses show lower deforestation rates inside Indigenous-managed areas. Biodiversity surveys find higher species richness where traditional land use persists. Carbon storage is greater in intact forests under customary stewardship.
Even climate policy has begun to catch up with this reality. Programs aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation increasingly recognize that protecting Indigenous rights is one of the most cost-effective climate strategies available. It is cheaper and more durable to support communities who already keep forests standing than to restore landscapes after they have been destroyed.
Yet recognition often stops at rhetoric. Legal acknowledgment of customary land rights remains partial and contested. Development plans continue to prioritize short-term economic gains over long-term ecological stability.
The Dayak are not asking to be fossilized as museum pieces of tradition. They are demanding what evidence already supports: secure rights, meaningful participation in decision-making and respect for systems that work.
A Choice That Is No Longer Abstract
Borneo stands at a crossroads. One path leads toward continued extraction, deeper inequality and accelerating ecological collapse. The other recognizes that the most effective forest conservation strategy on the island already exists and has existed for centuries.
Choosing the second path requires rethinking who is seen as a legitimate steward of land. It means accepting that progress does not always arrive in the form of bulldozers and balance sheets. Sometimes, it looks like restraint. Sometimes, it sounds like an Indigenous language spoken along a forest river at dawn.
The evidence is clear. Where the Dayak remain in control of their ancestral lands, Borneo’s forests endure. Not perfectly, not untouched, but alive. In a world running out of intact ecosystems, that endurance is not incidental. It is instructive.
The question is no longer whether the Dayak can protect the forest. They already have. The question is whether modern society is willing to learn from that fact before the green patches on the map disappear altogether.
