Forest destruction may turn Riau into desert in 40 years
Haidir Anwar Tanjung, The Jakarta Post, Pekanbaru, Riau
A great disaster looms in Riau as this resource-rich province becomes inhospitable to plague the local populace, following excessive exploitation by a handful of tycoons who ignore environmental conservation, thus threatening the existence of its forests.
The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) has predicted that unless preventive measures are taken, Riau's forest vegetation will be extinct in 15 years. This danger is more imminent as the province's Spatial Layout Plan (RTRWP) for 2002-2015 includes the conversion of protected forests and water catchment areas into timber estates (HTI), which will turn Riau into a desert in 40 years' time.
Norindra, a non-governmental organization from Norway, in its cooperation with the Indonesian government to analyze one of Riau's protected forests, Bukit Tigapuluh, has discovered a startling conversion into a monoculture, making it a critical zone.
"This critical condition supports the prediction that Riau will likely be a vast barren land," Purwo Susanto of the province's WWF representative office said on Thursday.
Purwo, who has been with WWF for five years, told The Jakarta Post that Riau's forest concession areas, timber estates and plantations covered 6,420,323 hectares (ha), or over 70 percent of its 9,456,120-ha land territory, leaving only 3,035,797 ha for urban and rural areas as well as agriculture, while protected forests should constitute 30 percent of the relevant region as required by law.
A monoculture crop like oilpalm, according to research, consumes 1,000 liters of water per ha, and up to 1998 alone Riau had over 1.3 million hectares of oilpalm estate. The roots of this palm cover the topsoil, rendering the land barren. The situation is worsened by illegal logging, which parches the land in the dry season and causes underground peat erosion in the rainy season.
Rully Sumandi, coordinator of the spatial layout coalition for Riau, an NGO alliance that involves WWF, confirmed Purwo's explanation by indicating that the extensive HTI and plantations, as described in the region's RTRWP, would lead to environmental destruction.
In Rully's view, the Riau RTRWP had not been independently drawn up. He suspected that two giant paper companies in the province, PT Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (RAPP), under Raja Garuda Mas, with APRIL as its principal in Singapore, and PT Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper (IKPP) under the Sinar Mas Group, were behind the plan or at least interested in forest conversion into estates or HTI.
"There must have been some intervention by both as they are interested in increasing their production. So our alliance will keep trying to persuade the government to revise the RTRWP, otherwise we will institute legal proceedings," Rully affirmed.
PT IKPP spokesman Ian Machyar denied any involvement of his company in funding the region's spatial planning by referring to Sinar Mas Group's financial crisis. "There's no such funding from PT IKPP. We are short of funds ourselves," he claimed when asked to confirm by the Post last week.
Riau Governor Saleh Djasit attributed his region's forest damage to illegal logging, forest occupation by squatters, poverty, a lack of awareness of forest development, policy errors, forest mismanagement and forest fires. Most notably, the destruction is due to the disparity between raw material supply and industrial pulp capacity.
"This imbalance between forest land potential and industrial demand has prompted increased illegal logging and overfelling," said the governor, without mentioning any company by name.
A provincial councillor, Badar Ali Madjid, meanwhile pointed out that the state of the forest had worsened under the presence of two of Southeast Asia's largest pulp firms, RAPP and IKPP. "They are major receivers of stolen logs though they own HTI to meet their material needs, because the timber estates have failed to meet industrial capacity," said Madjid.
Consequently, protected forests, nature reserves and buffer zones have become an easy target for denudation by international logging companies as well as by local communities, the results of whose plunder "is sold to both firms and also illicitly exported. If this continues unchecked, the days of Riau's forests will be numbered," the councillor from the Riau branch of the National Awakening Party revealed.
Prof. Tabrani Rab, a member of Riau's Regional Autonomy Advisory Council, made the same allegation and even suggested that the two companies, tycoon Sukanto Tanoto's RAPP and Eka Tjipta Widjaja's IKPP, should simply be closed down. He told the Post that Riau could learn from the people in North Tapanuli regency in North Sumatra, who militantly safeguarded their environment and thus encouraged local community groups to take action against PT Inti Indorayon, resulting in the pulp and paper plant's closure.