You will see results soon, and in three years, we will have solved this.
Joko Widodo, President of Indonesia[1]
The Indonesian president made this promise amid the fire and smoke haze disaster in September 2015. He was troubled by the fact that the 2015 fires severely impacted the nation’s environment, economy, and politics. Soon after, he established the Badan Restorasi Gambut (BRG, or Peatland Restoration Agency),[2] a new institution with the main purpose of restoring the degraded environment. After enforcing coercive approaches for decades, this moment was the very first time the Indonesian government took a formal, coherent, and scientific-driven approach to tackle fire-related problems. One striking maneuver of the BRG was the way it created thousands of infrastructures as part of its fire governance. These were the facilities BRG expects Indigenous communities like Ngaju people in Central Kalimantan to operate and maintain to achieve an ideal environmental future—to fulfill the promise of the government.
Everything went smoothly until a prominent newspaper made the accusation that some fire infrastructures built in Central Kalimantan either malfunctioned or had never functioned at all to prevent fires. Responding to such allegations, BRG then organized a special fire operation.
“Today, we will answer the issue from the outside that the deep wells did not deliver any good [to the fire control]. This is not a media stunt! Hopefully, these infrastructures are beneficial for us to extinguish the fires.” An officer associated with the Indonesian state’s fire control shouted these words to almost two hundred Indigenous Ngaju people who had come from several villages to witness the fire operation’s opening in August 2019 in Central Kalimantan (figure 2; emphasis added). These villagers were members of Fire Care Community (FCC), a community-based fire controlling group, specifically recruited not only to prevent but also to combat fires with newly installed fire infrastructures. Equipped with such facilities, the Indonesian government prepared these Indigenous people to become environmental subjects (Agrawal 2005) who “ought to” protect the lands and forests from fires. Still, fires raged ferociously. The blazing fires that summer then evoked questions about the whole fire governance program since 2016.
Fire Infrastructures as Orienting Devices
Instead of gigantic or spectacular objects, BRG infrastructures were commonly materialized in two mundane forms (figure 3). First were the deep wells, which were built where fires were most anticipated—within and around peat forest or agricultural lands. A deep well serves two interrelated purposes: as a water source to wet the peatland whenever necessary and as water supply for combating fires. The second form of infrastructure was canal blocks, which were built with either concrete or piles of tree trunks to cease the flow of water from peatland. Typically, these canals were used by people for transportation access (Dohong et al. 2018). Despite their ordinary and simple form, they were massive in number. By the time I visited my field site in 2019, more than 10.000 units of infrastructure had been built in Central Kalimantan alone.
BRG formally names these facilities “Peat Rewetting Infrastructure.” However, I refer to them as “fire infrastructures” to emphasize that such facilities are not mere technical tools for the ecosystem. I suggest that associating these infrastructures with the potentiality and anticipation of fires is crucial for retaining the socio-historical grounds behind the initiatives. I intend to emphasize that these materials of anticipation have been built around villages, farming lands, and forests to be operated by Indigenous communities precisely because the state maintains the narrative that fires are caused by customary practices. For that reason, these infrastructures would be better construed as orienting devices through which the Indonesian government tries to reshape the future relationship between people and the environment (Rodgers & O’Neill, 2012).
Rather than a passive medium, this infrastructure is an active material that mediates interaction, conditions people’s experiences, and shapes everyday life (Harvey 2018; Appel, Anand, and Gupta 2018; Mains 2019). Infrastructure, thus, plays a critical governing role in addressing and constituting subjects (Larkin, 2013:329), or making and unmaking of subjects (Appel, Anand, and Gupta, 2018:20-1).
Fire Infrastructures as Environmental Burden
After a fire operation, Yana,[3] a young Ngaju, told me, “it’s us who have been fighting the fires deep in the forest while the others [mentioning the state’s formal firefighters, police, and military] work around the curbs only.” Fara, a village facilitator, further explained that FCC members often use money from their own pocket to operate fire infrastructures, which they obviously could not afford. The everyday reality of operating fire infrastructures was harsh for Indigenous Ngaju people who were expected by the state to cover a vast area of farming and forest areas. It was not only about time, labor, and resources, but also these tasks carried an immanent risk associated with combating fires.
From the state’s perspective, these infrastructures were created for the people, and thus the villagers were the ones to maintain them. My visit to several villages that summer suggested that, however, Ngaju people did not necessarily share the same view. They were not fully aware of who was responsible for these facilities and most of them did not even know where those fire infrastructures were located. While there were, undoubtedly, many instances of sturdy and functional deep wells and canal blocks, numerous infrastructures were just like what I saw in the Mantangai sub-district: shaky, unwanted, and unmaintained (figure 4).
A BRG affiliated personnel suggested that such unkempt structures are “maybe because they [the villagers] see these infrastructures as unreachable.” Again he recounted that “once I went for inspection with my team, and it was super tiring, as I needed to walk for hours.” The location for deep wells and canal blocks were defined by BRG’s indicative map for restoration regardless of how they would actually be managed. Here is a classic example of how development is guided by the practice of cartography for the sake of greater legibility (Scott 1998).
Furthermore, the various procedures for operating these fire infrastructures were complex and near impossible for villagers to follow. To be legally acknowledged, and reimbursed, FCC members needed to write a proposal, often with review and revision. Then, while combating fires, FCC members also needed to document their activities, producing pictures with GPS coordinates and time information stamped on them. Despite the fact that only a few communities had access to the city, they were required to attach such pictures and a two-minute video, too—along with a written report—and carry it all directly to the nearest BRG representation to be approved. This bureaucratic demand was proven to be instrumental in dissociating people and the infrastructures. Sadly, when fires in 2019 occurred, and these infrastructures failed to fulfill their promise, the blame was again readdressed to Indigenous conduct like it has been for four decades.
Concluding Remarks: Whose Future?
Scholars propose that infrastructures are entwined with imagined futures, thus allowing us to examine expectations, anticipation, and the political life of those who live them (Appel, Anand & Gupta 2018; Gupta 2018; Ballestero 2019; Jensen 2019). My ethnographic experience in Central Kalimantan then shows that the state’s imagined future for these infrastructures vastly differed from the actual effects within the villages themselves.
Instead of instilling the state’s version of the environmental future, these fire infrastructures actually created yet another environmental burden to Indigenous Peoples. It is clear from the very beginning that these fire infrastructures were designed to shift the environmental responsibility and the labor associated with it from the government to Indigenous Peoples. Although the initiatives were labeled as “participatory,” the actual processes were informed by the same logic: that for environmental purposes Indigenous practices should be corrected and aligned.
Notes
[1] The Jakarta Post, September 30, 2015, “Indonesia needs three years to solve haze problem, says President Joko Widodo” retrieved from https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/09/30/indonesia-needs-three-years-solve-haze-problem-says-president-joko-widodo.html
[2] By 2020, this institution was expanded to Peat and Mangrove Restoration Agency or BRGM.
[3] Names mentioned in the article are pseudonyms.
References
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Sofyan Ansori is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at Northwestern University. His dissertation project examines relationships between humans and fires in light of the current climate crisis. His ethnographic work engages specifically with how Ngaju people—an Indigenous community in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia—navigate their thoughts and actions amid the burning forests, the vibrant fires, and the state’s ongoing desire to enforce anti-fire policies. Email: sofyanansori2022@u.northwestern.edu | Google Scholar: https://tinyurl.com/sofyanansori