It's been more than 10 years since a young civil servant saved his archipelago from a monoculture plantation in the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. Today, Mika Ganobal uses his campaign to control part of the suburban island chain he helped save a decade ago.
The head of the Department of Trade and Industry in the Aru Islands, Alo Tabela, said: "Now Mika is the main person who can eradicate illegal logging."
The Aru Archipelago in eastern Indonesia consists of about 100 small islands. The island chain, roughly the size of Puerto Rico, was part of the Australian continent until it was separated by rising sea levels 8,000 years ago. Today, about 100,000 people live on the islands more than 500 kilometers north of Australia's Northern Territory.
In 2013, Mika was around 30 years old when miners from a shadowy company called the Menara Group ( menara means "tower" in Indonesian) arrived with the intention of destroying the Aru Islands for a huge sugar plantation.
In the late 2000s, the leader of the Aru Islands, retired army colonel Teddy Tengko, signed an agreement to turn most of his land into a sugar plantation.
Before Teddy allowed the extensive landings, prosecutors accused him of corruption, accusing him of stealing nearly $5 million from the islands' annual budget.
Teddy was tried on these charges in 2012, although his lawyers managed to keep him out of jail until he was forcibly arrested upon his arrival in Aruru in 2013. Police put Teddy on the plane waiting on the tarmac. A year later, he died of a heart attack in prison.
However, Teddy quietly revoked Aru's rainforest conservation status while in office and did so without consulting the affected indigenous Aru people.
#SaveAru
Mika was among the various groups on Aru Island organizing against the company's plans. Mika, who was usually kept inside a group of protesters, could be seen driving a truck with a megaphone to rally the crowd.
Plantation managers tried to convey the message to the Aru people that the project would bring money and infrastructure to the Aru, but few were convinced.
"Their promises were big," Mika told Mongabay at the time. "Maybe they will build something, but if they take the forest from us, we will not return it."
At that time, very few people had telephones or used the Internet. Parish priest Jackie Manuputti of the state capital, along with local blogger Habib Almaskati, used handwritten notes and text messages to rally opposition in remote Arun communities.
Interestingly, this network has grown into an international movement known as #SaveAru. Social media users in Australia, the US and elsewhere showed their support for the campaign by posting photos of themselves holding #SaveAru placards. This foreign interest caused influential local institutions, such as the largest church and the state university, to pressure government officials to cancel the project.
Menard's group continued to try to get the final permit needed to set up bases in Arruda, even as the campaign expanded. But in 2014, Indonesia's then Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hassan confirmed that Indonesia's central government would not approve the project.
Conservationists said the #SaveAru campaign was a rare case of marginalized communities protesting plantation practices that have contributed to Indonesia's rapid deforestation since the turn of the century.
Political rise
In 2019, five years after the government closed the plantation, Mika Ganobal became head of the village of Shiva Lima, west of Arun. Last year, Mika was appointed to govern East-North Arun, one of the 10 regions that make up the island chain.
Along the coast of the Mica region, a number of rivers flow into the sea, the largest of which flows into a bay about 2 kilometers wide, populated by dozens of small islands.
In an interview, Mika Mongabay told Indonesia how his experience as an activist represents his constituents as they face the new dangers of island life.
"Public consultations lead nowhere," he said.
Faced with an attempted land grab, the people of Aru must face the same daily problems that many communities in Indonesia's interior face, from deforestation to overfishing.
Micah and his wife, Dina Somali, are passing on what they know about the land here to their children. As parents, Micah and Dina told their children about the mangroves that grow along the shore near the family home. Here in Aru, mangroves are called wakat trees.
"The only vacations affected are in Dobod... due to settlement expansion," Mika said, referring to the islands' capital. "Other places I've seen people really care about their time because it's their way of life."
The giant wakat trees that grow along the islands near Mickey's house produce fruits that are staples in the man's kitchen. The roots of wakat trees provide food for crustaceans, fish and shrimp, which local people rely on for their protein needs.
Mika says that when wakata trees begin to rot, the wood becomes infected with tambelo worms, which can be eaten raw or cooked and dried.
In addition to caring for mangroves, Mika supports local fishermen. Large trawlers, known in Indonesia as kantrang nets, often enter Aru waters and clash with local fishermen. Cantrang nets are the subject of a controversial ban due to their small mesh size, high catch volume and are widely criticized on sustainability grounds.
As Internet access expanded, news of the campaign began to spread more widely in remote areas of Indonesia. However, few expected the group behind #SaveAru to bring the Outlands controversy to an international audience more than a decade ago. Based on today's local government campaign experience.
"[We may be civil servants], but when we return to society, we are children of the soil or children of custom [tradition]," Mika said. "It cannot be divided."
Mika and Dina have four children, all boys, and the third, born at the height of Mika's #SaveAru campaign, is named Leizawa.
"Lei means 'boy' and Sawa is short for 'save Aru'," Mika said. "We hope that Leizawa's name will remain a memory of resistance for the rest of our lives.
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
