Delima Silalahi, 46, was awarded the Goldman Prize for the battle that allowed six tribes to reclaim more than 17,000 acres of forest that a large pulp and paper company was turning into a eucalyptus plantation. Due to fires in forests and peat bogs, Indonesia is considered to be one of the countries most responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases.
San Francisco ( / Agencies) – Delima Silalahi – an Indonesian woman of the Batak ethnic group from the North Tapanuli district, in North Sumatra – is one of the six winners announced yesterday of the 2023 edition of the Goldman Prize, the highest award of the world related to the theme of environmental protection.
Delima Silalahi, 46, Executive Director of the NGO Kelompok Studi dan Pengembangan Prakarsa Masyarakat (KSPPM), was awarded for leading a campaign that enabled six indigenous communities in North Sumatra to win recognition of their rights to 17,824 acres of rainforest tropical. Her community’s activism reclaimed this land from a pulp and paper company, which had partially converted it into an industrial eucalyptus plantation. Now that the six communities have recovered the property, they have begun to restore native forest species in those areas.
Indonesia – recall the promoters of the Goldman Prize in its explanatory statement – is one of the countries with the greatest responsibility for the increase in greenhouse gases due to the cutting and burning of forests and peat bogs for the creation of industrial plantations. Between 2015 and 2019, 10.8 million acres of forests and peatlands burned, an area larger than the entire area of the Netherlands. At the same time, Indonesia has the third largest area of tropical rainforest in the world that can store vast amounts of carbon, which is essential to combat climate change.
In recent years, Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL), a pulp and paper company, has invaded the forests of North Sumatra. When local communities protested the destruction of their forests, the company called the police, who dispersed and forcibly detained the protesters.
In 2013 a Constitutional Court ruling confirmed that customary forests are not state forests, giving indigenous peoples in Indonesia the opportunity to claim legal management of their traditional territories. Deeply concerned about the massive expropriation of indigenous lands in favor of the pulp and paper industry – and its enormous impact on the forests of the Lake Toba region – Delima and her team at KSPPM began organizing the communities locals to claim their rights.
She has traveled from village to village educating communities, despite the fact that in Tano Batak communities women are often excluded from decision-making. In February 2022, thanks to the efforts of Delima and her team, the Indonesian government granted six Tano Batak communities legal management of 17,824 acres of their traditional forests. Delima and the KSPPM collaborate with communities for the reforestation and restoration of ecosystems, increasing the tree cover of forests and their natural resilience to climate.
Along with Delima Silalahi, the 2023 Goldman Prize was awarded to activists Zafer Kizilkaya (Turkey), Alessandra Korap Munduruku (Brazil), Chilekwa Mumba (Zambia), Tero Mustonen (Finland) and Diane Wilson (United States).
Photo: Edward Tigor/Goldman Price
