Indigenous community fights to save its lands on Indonesia’s historic tin island

Photo by: Moh Tamimi/Mongabay Indonesia. Retrieved from news.mongabay.com

Nasidi paddled gently past a row of the eponymous rasau trees that line the riverbanks here in Tebet Rasau village, where a decade ago people would wade into the Lenggang River to catch silverfish. But life along the river here in the hills of Belitung Island, he said, is not as it once was.

“In the past, if it rained upstream, after three days the water would get to our village,” Nasidi told Mongabay Indonesia as he continued along the Lenggang. “Now, as soon as it rains, the water rushes down quickly and causes flooding.”

Tebet Rasau is named for the rasau, or pandan, trees (Pandanus amaryllifolius) that grow in the upland of the Lenggang River here on Belitung, an island located around 350 kilometers (217 miles) north of Jakarta between the Java and Natuna seas.