Last week third field work to east of north Borneo, after the Ranau town all the way to Sukau, Sandakan or Lahad Datu, oil palm estates are all over both sides of the road. Two set of samples were taken from two palm oil mills. River water samples taken before and after the merging point with palm oil mill effluent, and another about 1km distance in downstream. From the entrance guard house till the sampling points, the estates are way humongous than I initially thought of.
Now I fully understand why the environmentalists and NGO so anti oil palm industry. I cant help but wonder, seeing the land and the area belongs to local people. If the people don’t even appreciate or take notice of the bountiful of actual benefit a forest can offer than an oil palm estates that provide short-term fast cash or government incentives, why should me as a foreigner in this state be bother that much?
Its like the cash crops a.k.a. rural area development against nature crops a.k.a. slow cash in.
I love the people here. They are much humble and kinder than the peninsular people could be. I enjoy the pace of life here, I don’t have to be hypocrite to myself and everyone, or at least I don’t have to be all the time as I have been during the time in peninsular. A lot of the rural areas people don’t have high education, and under the falsely fabricated illusion by governments with great sums of incentives, the very desire to enjoy the fruits of rural area development as we are enjoying now in city and the images of people from oil palm industry driving around in Hilux, would they not tempted by such lucrative baits?
On the other hand, I love the nature. I would wake up in the 5am to catch the sunrise, the wildlife early morning activities, things like you can hear the elephant triumph or gang of monkeys making loud noise, watching the hornbills fly across the river to another side of the forest, etc. so peaceful, and so tranquil. I breathe the freshest air, enjoy watching and observing the insects and the fungus…my mind was sooo calm, content and such delightful. At the mean time, carry out my own personal research to reduce the human impacts upon this beautiful nature.
Now, am doing internship with a small environmental consultancy firm. What should I do when I graduate then? Give a hand to the rural area development force or nature conservation & preservation? Under the very fundamental of human devilish nature, ‘sustainable development’ is the terms that only exist in idealist. Or should I grab both and crash them together? The imbalances of the natural equation are getting out of hand. I need more power and knowledge, else is either eventually am engulf by the chain of reactions that resulted by these imbalances or totally give up & switch into creative fields where I might do better, while let the local people here reap their own deeds. now for the time being, all I need is more times for myself and things that I care about like my kids. For the past few weeks, were so busy with works that I neglected Xena. Now she took along Xavier and left me. Admit even Schnoorzy and Sasha, I haven’t really spent much time with them, provide enough care for them…guess am really not a good father……
my heart is aching, my soul is confusing, my mind is tormenting and my wallet is definitely struggling! :o)
No comments:
Post a Comment