There is a word people in Bangka already use for planting something your grandchildren will harvest. Kelekak. It predates every project that has ever arrived on the island with a restoration plan.
That changes what the work is. Nobody here needs to be persuaded that trees are worth planting. What they need is for the planting to survive contact with an economy that has spent two decades pointing the other way.
The pressure is arithmetic, not attitude
When pepper prices fell, farmers did not stop believing in pepper. They ran the numbers. Tin paid this week. Oil palm paid predictably. Pepper paid eventually, if the vines survived the drought and the basal rot, and if the price held, which it did not.
Land follows that arithmetic. Gardens became pits. The turquoise water you see in aerial photographs of the island is not a lake.
What has to be true for trees to stay in the ground
So the question is never should we plant trees. It is: what has to be true for the trees to still be there in ten years?
A few things, as far as we can tell:
- The farm has to produce something in year one, year three, and year ten — not only year ten.
- The planting material has to be healthy at the start, because a weak seedling fails at exactly the moment confidence is thinnest.
- Somebody has to be reachable when something goes wrong in month four.
- The harvest has to meet a buyer who can see where it came from.
None of that is a new idea either. It is just the unglamorous scaffolding that lets an old one hold.
