Forest conversion on Kalimantan border halted

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government said on Wednesday it would forbid any new conversion of forests for plantation use in the Kalimantan border areas in a bid to help protect the environment.

Minister of Forestry Malam S. Ka'ban said that his office instead wanted to lure private investors to rehabilitate some 1.1 million hectares of abandoned deforested areas on the Kalimantan border through a "build, operate, rehabilitate and transfer" (BORT) mechanism.

"The Ministry of Forestry will no longer allow conversion of forests into plantations. We will instead optimize the use of abandoned lands," the minister said in a written speech read out by the director general of forest protection and natural resource conservation Arman Malolongan at a workshop on a conservation area referred to as the Heart of Borneo (HOB).

Under the BORT mechanism, investors would be allowed to replant 40 percent of the areas with commercial agricultural crops, while the remaining 60 percent must be reforested.

"Under BORT, the companies will only receive concession rights for 25 years to 35 years. And they cannot be extended. After that, the firms have to restore the areas that were used for plantations," Ka'ban said.

The plan should bode well with the conservation work at the HOB, environmentalists said.

The HOB, the only place on earth where massive conservation is viable, is located in a 220,000 square kilometers protected area that straddles the transboundary highlands of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The area is the third largest tropical forest on the planet, after the Amazon in Brazil and Congo in Africa.

"Should the minister's words be fully implemented, we all should be happy that HOB will remain protected and that the planned giant oil palm plantation project will not be allowed to harm the HOB area," World Wide Fund for Nature Indonesia head of forestry programs Dian Achmad Kosasih told The Jakarta Post.

Several environmental groups, including WWF, have opposed the government's plan to set up a giant oil palm plantation in Kalimantan covering an area of 1.8 million hectares, fearing that it will threaten the rich biodiversity of the island. Under the initial plan, the plantation project would cover part of the HOB area on the Kalimantan border.

WWF Indonesia executive director Mubariq Ahmad said the HOB should always be kept protected because it was home to many species.

He said in the last 10 years, researchers from all over the world had found 361 new species in the area, making it the most pristine biodiversity center on the planet.

"About three new species are now found every day and many more will be found if we protect the area," he told Antara.

WWF recently announced its discovery of a new carnivore, slightly larger than a domestic cat with dark red fur and a long bushy tail, in the Kayan Mentarang National Park, East Kalimantan, that is part of 23 national parks and protected forest areas included in the HOB.