Beyond Slash and Burn: Building on Indigenous Management of Borneo’s Tropical Rain Forests.  Carol J. Pierce Colfer with Nancy Peluso and Chin See Chung.  Advances in Economic Botany, Vol. 11.  Bronx, NY:  New York Botanical Garden, 1997.  236pp, Bibliography, Appendices.  Reviewed by Pamela McElwee (Yale University, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies).

Although published by the New York Botanical Garden and looking like an academic book, this work is at heart a policy document in disguise.  While the author’s emphasis is on documenting knowledge and use of forests by local people in East Kalimantan, and the book makes use of studies carried out since 1979 by the Man and Biosphere program in Indonesia, there is an underlying agenda.  Hidden between the chapters on land management and forest use by the Kenyah is a plea for government and other officials in Indonesia to recognize local land management systems for what they are: highly adaptive, highly specialized, and often highly sustainable practices.

Colfer draws this conclusion from in-depth village studies.  The forest and agricultural practices of the Uma Jalan Kenyah in Eastern Kalimantan are explored at three different field sites.  All three villages of Kenyah are considered be – in the definition provided by Conklin in the 1950s --  integral shifting cultivators.  However, the title of the book gives a clue as to the focus of the study: Beyond Slash and Burn.  That is, Colfer’s emphasis is not so much the actual practice of swiddening; rather, as it is the result of swiddening.  In this sense, the book goes beyond a typical study of swiddeners.  The book does not focus on how swiddens are made per se, but on what is grown in the swiddens and how these plants are used.  She is also particularly interested in how these swidden gardens compare with forest use in ‘natural’ or less disturbed forests.  This focus may put off the swidden purist:  there is no discussion, for example,  of when in the calendar year swiddens are made, and only rudimentary discussion of how they are chosen, how they are cleared, and what techniques are used.

By focusing on what grows in swiddens (in terms of species diversity and end uses), the book wants to emphasize that the Kenyah are protective land managers. The Kenyah have prevented against Imperata cylindrica and soil erosion by keeping long fallow cycles and by planting fallows with soil-conserving tree and crop species.  Surveys of fallow fields and people’s use of plants from these fields indicates that they remain densely vegetated (although with more semi-domesticates than uncut forest) and do not revert to Imperata.  This is contrary to popular and government perceptions that Imperata takes over former swidden lands and converts vast areas of once-forest into ‘green deserts’ of the hearty grass.  In fact, in the surveys listed in the book, former swidden fields often contain more diversity of species than the more natural, un-cultivated forests surrounding them.

Colfer points to several keys to the Kenyah success in swiddening sustainably in the area.  There is a low average population density, as extensive outmigration to cities and new villages has kept the density the same over the 20 years of the study.  Also of importance is the fact that there have been little to no land tenure conflicts with neighboring groups or with timber concessionaires.  This has allowed the Kenyah to remain confident that their swidden fallows will be allowed to lie dormant the requisite amount of time needed for a productive system.  There also appears to be little desire among the Kenyah to market commercially any forest or agricultural products from swiddens, outside of a small local trade in pepper, bananas, or other fruits.  This has prevented conflicts over larger scale commercialization of land and produce.  Finally, the villages studied are generally close knit and ethnically homogenous villages

The fact that the book is based on relatively long-term field research is its great strength.  Another strength is the use of a number of quantitative indicators to describe swiddening and agricultural systems.  By providing this quantitative information, the book will appeal to policy makers and development planners who might find a purely ethnographic look at swiddening of less interest.  Some of the worthwhile tables and statistics included in the book include time allocation surveys and division of labor surveys, forest use/products surveys by gender, species/use charts for home gardens, dietary records, foods collected from stages of forest succession, and tree density in forests and fallows.  However, maps are poor or nonexistent, and there is little discussion of the general environmental parameters in the study site.  Furthermore, scientific names are used inconsistently and the glossary makes no distinction between words in Indonesian and words in Kenyah.

By emphasizing the holistic management of swiddens in Kalimantan, Colfer hopes to protest against Indonesian government plans to settle shifting cultivators and replant vast areas of Borneo with plantations of timber, rubber, etc.  The fact that the book can back up the claim that swidden is sustainable with fallow surveys indicating dense and diverse vegetation post-swidden will hopefully add to the volumes of work promoting swidden as a viable and sustainable land management practice.  Such works of course have been published since the 1950s by Conklin, etc., but recent publications such as Colfer’s will hopefully directly market these findings to more policy oriented realms.