Forest destruction may turn Riau into desert in 40 years

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.