After us, no deluge

Surely, it was not for lack of warning that disaster struck the North Sumatra resort town of Bahorok unawares last weekend. At least 92 people, including five foreign and 20 domestic tourists, were reported dead as a flash flood tore through the nature reserve and resort, leaving uprooted trees and demolished houses and bridges in its wake. Hundreds of local residents are missing and feared dead.

Of the five rivers in the area that overflowed after days of heavy rainfall further upstream in the Gunung Leuser National Park, of which the resort is a part, the worst flooding occurred along the Bahorok River, which runs through the township that is home to more than 43,000 people. Sunday's tragedy was the worst to hit the area in recent decades.

Tragic as the disaster may be, however, the writing had been on the wall for quite some time. According to a report released in 2001 by non-governmental organizations Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI) and Global Forest Watch (GFW), the Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia's richest and oldest and also one of its biggest, had even then already lost 4,250 of its more than two million hectares of forest cover.

In the province of North Sumatra alone, where the Bahorok resort is located, the Leuser ecosystem occupies an area of more than 384,000 hectares, but the damage inflicted on the park yearly by human intervention in this area is estimated to be about 7 percent. This worrying trend prompted a number of legislators last month to call on the provincial authorities of North Sumatra as well as the local community to do their part in preserving the park's pristine integrity.

Only as late as last September, Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, a former minister of the environment who is at present associated with the Indonesian Leuser Foundation (YLI), remarked that the Special Area of Aceh could count itself fortunate. The reason was that it had 2.4 million hectares of forest still intact and thus was spared the tragedies of forest fires and flooding. That, however, could change if the government pushes through its plan to build a road that cuts through the park to connect the province's east coast with the west.

Unfortunately, Aceh's neighboring province of North Sumatra is not so fortunate, as Sunday's disaster so dramatically shows. As larger and larger tracts of forest cover in the upstream areas are being denuded, more and more barriers to floodwaters are being removed, and it is the population who pay the price of deforestation.

It is worth pointing out that over the past few days, floods and landslides have hit a number of other regions in Indonesia, albeit with less serious consequences than the Bahorok calamity -- and all despite the repeated warnings that have been given by both officials and concerned citizen groups.

This country's forest cover extends over an area of about 100 million hectares. But experts estimate that Indonesia is losing its forest cover at a rate of about two million hectares a year, which is an area about four times the size of the island of Bali. Even if immediate steps are taken to put a halt to the willful destruction of our environment for motives of selfishness and greed -- besides also the actual needs of the more needy segment of the population -- the Indonesian soil will take decades, if not centuries to recover.

As such, we cannot allow the process of the destruction of our land -- and waters -- to continue unchecked. Therefore, even if it seems like tilting at windmills, the effort to stop the trend must be made. What must come first at this point is to make all citizens see that it is in their own interest to preserve the environment. Herein lies our only hope for a better future -- for ourselves and for our children and grandchildren.