Traditional Brick Making
& Deforestation in Sumatra's Rainforest 

Indonesia’s forests continue to come under severe and constant threat from commercial logging, mining and wide spread estate crops such as oil palm.  Among the many drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in Indonesia are a number of traditional livelihood practices related directly to the manufacture of housing.  The traditional practice of clay brick making has received little attention as a large and growing consumer of hardwood timber from primary forests.  The environmental impacts of these traditional enterprises are often overlooked due their small, local, historical or traditional nature as non mechanised peasant trades.  Traditional Clay Brick Making in Indonesia relies on the consumption of large quantities of timber throughout the firing process.  In the Padang-Pariaman area of West Sumatra a single cluster of approximately 1,000 traditional brick making enterprises burns more than 24,000 truckloads of hardwood per year, which is approximately 288,000 cubic meters or the equivalent of 7,100 hectares (71 km2) of forest area annually[1].  While up to 25% of the timber used as fuel comes from land cleared by fire for commercial use, the vast majority of the hardwood timber is illegally extracted from surrounding standing primary and secondary forests at a growing cost to the environment, driving habitat and biodiversity loss and soil erosion, resulting in increased current incidence and future risk of local disasters such as landslides and flooding.  

 

Economically, the demand for building products such as clay brick continues to increase at pace as a decade of strong growth in Indonesia has fuelled consumption particularly housing demand, with its domestic market accounting for an average of 67 percent of GDP between 2000 and 2011.  This expanding consumption is further exacerbating the scarcity in forest resources which in turn drives a rapid rise in input cost to traditional brick makers.  This study investigates the potential to alleviate this demand for timber as a fuel, while addressing the rising cost of clay brick production.  We reveal that it is possible to replace more than 50% of forest hardwood fuel used in the clay brick firing process with Palm Oil Kernels (POK) thus reducing on major localised driver of deforestation and forest degradation.  Moreover, evidence shows a reduction in the cost of the clay brick firing process by as much as 40% creating a potential increase in profitability for poor producers. A further positive side effect of POK as an alternative fuel is its impacts on the overall brick strength and quality due to a higher more consistent temperature during the vitrification process.  

 

 

Minangkabau people have made fired clay bricks for centuries. Bricks however, were used for constructing temples, monuments, buildings and sites of significance. In recent decades, masonry has become the building material of choice as the economy grows and wood or bamboo housing is no longer a      

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[1] ISEASS, IDRC, 1999, Indonesia’s Fire and Haze, The cost of catastrophe Institute of South East Asian Studies, Singapore, International Development Research Centre, Canada Sumatra forest timber averages 40.5 cubic metres per hectare,