The 221st Chainsaw

Written from Sukadana, West Kalimantan (March 2023).

Last Thursday I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of a doorless house taking part in my first “chainsaw buyback” ceremony. I was accompanied by the host’s family, multiple ASRI staff and a National Park ranger - all overseen by a giant yellow teddy bear. After 23 years of logging, two months of negotiations and god knows how many felled trees, Mursidi was hanging up his chainsaw.

It was the 221st ceremony that ASRI had conducted as part of their 15 year health-conservation programme, which works to incentivise local communities to stop logging in the nearby Gunung Palung National Park. In return for his commitment to quit, Mursidi and his wife would receive 4 million IDR worth of in-kind support from ASRI to help set up a new business selling Areca nuts. They would also receive a 6 million IDR loan, to be paid back over two years. That’s a total of $700 USD.

As individual actions go, this was incredibly moving to witness. So much of what I’ve experienced in Sukadana has simultaneously restored my faith in humanity and further entrenched my anger about the apathy that so many in the West express towards the climate and ecological crisis. Whilst some refuse to sort through their recycling because it will “probably get burned anyway”, a man at the wrong end of the poverty line was giving up the only source of income he had ever known in a bid to protect his local rainforest.

There is a phrase here that goes“Tak kenal, tak sayang." If you don’t know something, you can’t love it. For me, this was that moment. The commitment that Mursidi was making - made all the more moving by our humble surroundings, his beaming ageing parents and his almost toothless wife - had me on the verge of tears. Thankfully, I managed to hold them back. Having had absolutely nothing to do with any of the day’s achievements it would have been gratuitous for me to steal the limelight. However, that feeling has been stuck in my throat ever since.

There is a legitimate debate back home about the power of individual action. What’s the point in trying to avoid palm oil, beef or soya when - as recent studies show - the Amazon is being logged at a rate so unprecedented that it has now become a net emitter of carbon? How can one person’s actions possibly make a dent against the likes of the food giant Cargill which is profiting off this destruction and still not being held accountable? What can someone in Europe do about the oil spills that are threatening the lives of multiple human and non-human species across Peru, Ecuadorian Amazon and Nigeria?

What we have to remind ourselves is this: this sense of apathy is a delusion. If the actions and desires of Westerners had no consequences, the world would be a very different place today. If the decisions that we make on a daily basis had no impact, the “chainsaw buyback” ceremony that I witnessed last week would not have been necessary.

For as long as I can remember I have expressed (and felt, deeply) a concern that “the world is running out”. I now recognise what that means. Opportunities to witness nature at her most raw are few and far between and planetary destruction can at times seem both inevitable and unstoppable. As Dr Kinari Webb puts it in her memoir; “in dark nights of the soul, it is hard to remember that there are butterflies.” But, as she goes on to argue, that is no reason not to try.

I was reminded by a somewhat questionable LinkedIn post this week that individual actions can take multiple different forms. Some, such as giving up meat and switching lightbulbs, can seem futile in the scheme of things. Others - supporting indigenous land rights, campaigning against new oil fields, protesting to protect our civil liberties - hold much more visible weight.

Not everyone has a chainsaw that they can give up. But what Mursidi’s commitment has shown is that we are all uniquely capable of making contributions within the constructs of our own lives and the unique set of circumstances that they hold. We can all use our voices, our wallets and (especially where I'm from) our privilege to collectively affect change. Ultimately it’s one of the most self-interested moves we can make, because we all depend on a functioning planet to survive.

In her memoir (yes, I'm obsessed) Kinari Webb shares a line by Alice Walker: “ecstasy is uncut forest and the smell of fresh baked bread”. Whatever our ecstasy is, and whatever activities we chose to take to protect it, we have no choice but to try. Because butterflies do still exist, and in some corners of the world ancient rainforests are still, miraculously, intact. We all have a responsibility to ensure that this continues to be the case.