On Indonesia’s unique Enggano Island, palm oil takes root in an Indigenous society

Photo by Elviza Diana/Mongabay Indonesia. Retrieved from news.mongabay.com

Milson Kaitora’s grandparents never had trouble finding water to grow food here on Enggano Island. But today, coastal abrasion is pushing back the shoreline of Milson’s village, and the dearth of freshwater has reduced the annual rice harvest from twice a year to just once.

“Now, there isn’t even enough water, the rice fields have become abandoned land,” Milson Kaitora, the Pa’abuki, or tribal leader, of the Enggano Indigenous people, told Mongabay Indonesia.

Saltwater abrasion is gradually submerging land and intruding on freshwater sources beneath Enggano, which is leading to desiccation of the community’s once-fertile rice fields. With an Indonesian company now targeting the island for palm oil development, people here fear worse is to come.

Enggano was formed by oceanic crust and is today slightly larger than the city of Detroit. It never joined to the mainland of Indonesia’s main western island of Sumatra, meaning Enggano is host to a unique array of endemic animal and plant species.

Oceanic islands like Enggano, or the Galápagos, form when magma rises up from beneath the ocean to create a new land mass. Such islands develop a degree of ecological isolation from their nearest mainland, which were formed out of tectonic collision, because species on an oceanic island must arrive naturally, usually via the wind or sea. As the millennia pass, these plant and animal species proceed further down their own evolutionary path.