Nature is more than just a beautiful backdrop one could look at.
For Indonesian nature conservationist Farwiza Farhan, nature is a friend she can go to whenever life’s burdens become too much to bear. As a child, Farhan often climbed trees whenever she had problems, staying there until she calmed down.
“Nature has always been my solace,” Farhan, one of the five Ramon Magsaysay awardees for 2024, said in a recent interview with select media, including Rappler.
She grew up by the beach and near a patch of forest in Aceh, a province in Indonesia at the northwest tip of Sumatra Island. Aceh is home to the Leuser Eecosystem, a 2.6-million-hectare expanse (equivalent to 42 Philippine National Capital Regions) considered by experts to be the last place in the world where several critically endangered species like the Sumatran tiger, orangutan, elephant, and rhino still roam together in the wild.
A silent confidante, nature has always been there for Farhan. This is why, even as a child, she tried to be there for nature when it needed her help.
When she was 12, she would constantly ask her father, then a member of the Indonesian parliament’s environment and energy committee, to protect the Borneo landscape.
She said that despite feeling “powerless” as a child, she knew she had the power to convince her father.
“I [was] campaigning constantly to make sure that I [included] that to the policy that he [was] working on,” Farhan, now 38 years old, recalled.
This lifetime of dedication to nature eventually led to Farhan being chosen as one of the recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award — considered Asia’s equivalent of a Nobel Prize — for her conservation efforts in Indonesia.(READ: Studio Ghibli founder Miyazaki Hayao among 2024 Ramon Magsaysay awardees)
Path to environmental conservation
Farhan brought her love for nature to her college years, taking up biology at the University Sains Malaysia — the second oldest university in the country — in 2003. It was in the university where she first heard the calling to work on conservation after falling in love with the ocean as a marine biology student.
But at the time, Farhan said she couldn’t pursue conservation as a profession as most jobs in the field required five to 10 years of work experience or a master’s degree.
To enter the field of conservation, she took a master’s degree in environmental management at the University of Queensland in Australia. In 2009, while studying at the university, she had an opportunity to intern with the Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, an international think tank focused on carbon capture and storage to cut down emissions.
“When I was doing an internship with the institution, I learned a lot of things. First, I learned about climate policy, I learned about the role of coal and coal generation, power generation using coal, and how impactful it is to our climate,” she said.
Farhan was 22 when she made the pivotal decision to work in conservation after realizing that despite making a lot of money in her internship, her true happiness was still with conservation.
“I realized that I was not happy with that role. I feel like I’m contributing my expertise into something that I did not believe in. So, when the internship ended, I thought, I don’t need that amount of money; I still want to go in conservation,” she said.
After her internship, Farhan joined the Leuser Ecosystem Management Agency (BPKEL), a government agency created by the Aceh regional government to manage the Leuser Ecosystem.
Farhan worked at BPKEL until it was decommissioned by the governor of Aceh in 2012. That year, along with several of her colleagues from BPKEL, she formed the Forest, Nature, and Environment of Aceh Foundation (HAkA), leading the organization as its chairperson to continue protecting the Leuser Ecosystem.
When HAkA was just starting, Farhan said it looked like the businesses they faced were “the biggest, most powerful actors” in Aceh, which were given concession permits by Aceh’s local government to use protected areas despite HAkA’s protests.
“Suddenly, what they were doing, the illegal thing that they were doing, was legal. So, we were furious. We were like, no way that they get the permit after conducting these illegal activities, and they get the permit in areas that are [off-limits]. So, we’re like, fine, [we’ll] take the company to court,” Farhan said.
Monumental victory for nature
In 2014, Farhan and HAkA achieved one of the first huge victories of conservationists in the country, after the Indonesian court fined palm oil company PT Kallista Alam $30 million for the destruction it caused in the Leuser Ecosystem.
She and HAkA were in the middle of a court battle against the illegal concession permits of the palm oil company when it cleared and burned the Tripa peat swamp, a part of the Leuser Ecosystem, in 2012.
Peat swamps are formed in areas with continued exposure to water, preventing organic material from fully decomposing. They serve as a “transition zone,” where nutrients travel from land to water.
“While we were in court, while we were arguing, this is not yet [the] decision, the company [dared] to burn the forest. We were even more furious. How could they? We were fighting with them in court. They have no fear. They’re just burning the forest,” she said.
To hold PT Kallista Alam accountable, Farhan and her team worked to attract global attention by pointing out the illegal activities that the company did. This included getting illegal concession permits from the Indonesian government to clear forests in the Leuser Ecosystem.
The team also sent letters to Indonesia’s presidential office, prompting it to conduct an investigation that eventually lead to the office itself filing a lawsuit against PT Kallista Alam that resulted in the hefty $30-million fine. Farhan said they helped in the lawsuit by explaining to state prosecutors processes in nature work.
“What we did at that time was, we [made]sure that each of the judges [understood] that just a hot sun would not suddenly spark fire in a wet peat swamp forest. This is not gonna happen. It has to be deliberate,” she said.
Farhan said this landmark victory was monumental because it was the “first time” that Indonesia held a company liable for burning forests.
According to the World Resources Institute, nearly all fires in Indonesia are caused by humans to clear peatlands — a popular option for agricultural expansion to produce palm oil. The country is the leading producer of palm oil worldwide, supplying about half of the world’s demand, The Nature Conservancy said in an article.
“Normally, what would happen is the court will decide that one or two [persons are] found guilty. And this one or two [person s] that lit the fire will be jailed for one or two years, and that’s it,” Farhan said.
Fight for conservation continues
Aside from making a palm oil company pay $30 million for the damages it caused in the Leuser Ecosystem, HAkA was also involved in stopping the construction of a dam that threatened an elephant habitat in Indonesia.
HAkA is also involved in community outreach efforts that aim to educate the people living in Aceh about the importance of the Leuser Ecosystem.
Farhan said that in environmental policymaking, it is important for organizations to remind the government which issues need to be addressed.
“Sometimes, a bit more nudge is needed…. Oftentimes, civil society [needs] to nudge, [to] push, to campaign, [and] to keep the government accountable to their roles,” she said.
Empowering women in conservation
HAkA, now a 12-year-old institution, also has programs for women such as paralegal and citizen journalism training, entrepreneurship, and forest guard groups.
Farhan said they saw a need to empower women as protectors of the environment because women are “disproportionately more affected” by the effects of environmental destruction and climate change.
The conservationist said disasters such as crop failures could affect the financial status of families, making it more likely for them to force women to be in arranged marriages to get out of poverty.
Flash floods and landslides, she said, could also force women to relocate to areas that may be safe from disasters but are prone to violence.
“Oftentimes, we don’t often necessarily link environmental destruction, changing climate, and how girls and women have lost opportunities to life but these are the [sequences] in life that happen, that the climate impact [happens, though] we might not consciously link it up together,” Farhan said.
More than a decade of environment protection
Prior to winning the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Farhan’s dedication to environment conservation had already been recognized by several prestigious awards, including the National Geographic Wayfinder Award in 2022, Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award in 2021, Future for Nature Award in 2017, and the Whitley Award in 2016.
She was also a TED Fellow in 2021 and was named in TIME 100 Next 2022.
But to Farhan, the goals she has reached were only possible because of the support from the community in Aceh and the people around her.
“There are so many people that are working in this, in this sector, trying to protect the environment, trying to defend human rights. And so, many of them did not have the privilege that I did. So, all I can do is to share the platform that I happen to have today with everyone else that are still fighting as well,” she said. – Rappler.com
