Access to Natural Resources in Mainland Riau
Mainland Riau is rich in natural resources, but access to these resources is difficult in the swampland of eastern Sumatra. Rivers formed the axes of transport and the major determinant of the human settlement pattern for centuries. A new road from the inland capital of Pekanbaru to the seaport of Dumai, constructed by the oil-company Caltex in 1959, opened the area to successive waves of newcomers. The aim of this research project is to understand how and why various economic actors have gained access to the natural resources of mainland Riau.By Freek Colombijn
The coastal area of mainland Riau (Riau Daratan) is a typical frontier society. It is rich in natural resources -- oil, wood, and non-timber forest products -- but the tropical peat-swamp forest, inundated during part of the year, forms an effective barrier preventing easy access to these riches. In this country, rich in potential but poor in accessibility, transport axes are more important than anywhere else.Rivers formed the easiest, and in fact quite convenient, transport routes for generations. Human settlements were concentrated alongside the rivers. Main markets developed where tributaries branched off, or beyond where ships of a certain draught found that they could not pass and had to transship their goods into smaller vessels. Beyond the confines of the rivers, there were only footpaths and population density was very low.
The rise of the motorcar provided the impetus for a Sumatran road scheme, planned by the central colonial government. A road from the West coast to Pekanbaru, the inland capital of Riau, was completed in 1929. It greatly reduced travelling time and opened up land for smallholder rubber plantations, but following the rivers, did not alter the direction of the transport axes.
The Riau economy entered a completely new phase with the exploitation of oil. The California Texas Oil Company (Caltex) discovered the first oil field in Riau in 1940, and, disturbed by the Second World War, could finally start production in 1952. From then on, oil-mining in Riau has been a success story with its peak in 1970, when the province produced 84 percent of all Indonesia's oil export.
A new road
The bulk good posed new transport problems. Caltex found a radical solution to this through a whole new outlet with the construction of a deep sea port at Dumai and a 150-kilometre pipeline along a new road. In 1959 the whole road, from Pekanbaru to Dumai, was completed. At first it was a dirt road with ferry-crossings of rivers, but gradually the whole road has been up-graded with an asphalt surface, bridges replacing ferries and side roads.
The road opened the area for successive waves of other users. The first to enter the forests through the new road was the timber industry. Once the loggers had cleared the jungle, there was room for plantations of rubber and oil-palm, transmigrants (state-sponsored migrants coming from the overpopulated island of Java), and spontaneous migrants. The fast economic development along Riau's transport axes and the massive immigration have had profound demographic consequences. The economic growth has also brought about ecological stress.
Many of the economic, social and ecological changes come together in Pekanbaru in a condensed form. Since its founding in 1684, Pekanbaru has always been a transportation hub, but did not really take off until Caltex began to invest in the urban infrastructure. The road and bridge built by Caltex in 1959 gave the urban orientation a 90 degrees twist: the central axis shifted from the river to the road leading over the bridge, at a right angle to the river. Many public buildings, formerly located near the river banks, have had to find a new site on this road or a parallel road, which has caused pressure on the land market.
The economic development of Riau in itself is something to be applauded, but the rapid economic growth and the massive influx of migrants, all claiming a share of the natural assets, make competition over these assets inevitable. The various actors involved perceive the landscape (with its resources and transport routes) quite differently (Bender, 1993). The competition becomes more intense when the stock of resources declines because of environmental depletion. Here lies the central research question: How have the various economic actors (private, corporate, and state) gained access to the natural resources of Riau Daratan between 1870 and the present? The research will move from a description of the historical process, to understanding underlying forces.
The key word access has two meanings: the opportunity or right to use a certain resource, and the means of getting to the place where that resource is located. Both access in the juridical and geographical sense are relevant in this research, and it is assumed that access in both meanings influence each other.
The concept encompassing the whole research is that of frontier (Turner, 1920). Frontiers have been widely debated for their impact on a democratic spirit, but is only recently that the ecological consequences of the social characteristics of frontiers have begun to be analysed systematically (Colombijn, 1997; Pichón, 1996). For an understanding of the pattern of spatial development of roads, social geographers provide theoretical inspiration (Tolley & Thurton, 1995).
References
Bender, Barbara, 'Landscape-meaning and action', in B. Bender (ed.), Landscape; politics and perspectives 1-16. Berg, Providence 1993
Colombijn, Freek, 'The ecological sustainability of frontier societies in eastern Sumatra', in
P. Boomgaard, F. Colombijn and D. Henley (eds.), Paper landscapes; explorations in the environmental history of Indonesia 309-339. KITLV Press, Leiden 1997
Pichón, Francisco J., 'Settler agriculture and the dynamics of resource allocation in frontier environments', Human ecology 24 341-371. 1996
Tolley, Rodney & Brian Turnton, Transport systems, policy and planning; a geographical approach. Longman, Harlow 1995).
Turner, Fredrick Jackson, The frontier in American history . Holt, New York 1920).
:Dr F. Colombijn is a research fellow with the IIAS.