Forest conversion on Kalimantan border halted

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.