Government issues ruling to control land degradation

JAKARTA (JP): The government has issued a regulation to control land damage and is expected to approve a related one within two weeks, a senior official said on Monday.

The State Ministry of the Environment's assistant deputy for environmental law development, Barlin Abdulrahman, told reporters that Government Regulation No. 150/2000, which was endorsed by the President on Dec. 23 last year, deals with the effort to control the degradation of land allocated for manufacturing plants.

Barlin said the government ruling was drafted based on the fact that Indonesia was an agricultural country with a high level of farming, plantation and forestry activities.

"But it (development) has resulted in damage which is increasing every year," he said.

The second regulation was aimed at controlling land degradation due to forest and brush fires, according to Barlin.

"We're still waiting for the President's approval of the draft regulation, which will hopefully take place in two weeks," he said.

Separately, the Ministry's Director of Land, Forest and Watercourse Degradation Control Bambang Setyabudi said farmers' activities have changed the land's physical and biological characteristics.

"It's usually caused by overexploitation of land or a farming system which ignores soil conservation," he told The Jakarta Post over the phone.

Citing an example, he said the terrace farming system should be applied in the hilly Puncak resort area in West Java due to the sloping nature of the land.

"In the absence of such a system, the quality of the soil there has declined over the years," he added.

According to Bambang, based on the regulation, the Ministry will set the standards and criteria for assessing land degradation.

"But the implementation of the regulation is fully under the regional government's authority. They will formulate the programs to avoid, to overcome and to control land degradation, besides drawing up inventories of the areas that are badly degraded or more prone to degradation," he said.

The regulation, Bambang added, also obliged a local government to announce the condition and status of degraded land to the public without having to wait for any request to do so.

Bambang underlined the urgency of endorsing the second draft regulation.

Forest Resources Assessment (FAO) has reported that an estimated of 1.2 million hectares of Indonesian forest was felled annually from 1981 to 1990, or eight percent of the total 15.4 million hectares of world forest lost every year.

The FAO also estimated in 1999 that around two million hectares of Indonesian forests were burned in 1997, and more areas were burned in 1998.

According to Bambang, the regulation focused on the effort to prevent fires as they were very difficult to control and extinguish once they had started.

He said the draft suggested that land clearing by burning be permitted. "It's a tradition and it's hard to ban it," he said.

The draft also stipulated that concession holders would not be able to avoid their responsibilities if there were forest/brush fires within their areas.

"The only obstacle is how to obtain evidence of a concession holder's involvement in the fire. Therefore we will coordinate with experts and other departments in the use of technology," Bambang said.

Earlier on Monday, Minister Sonny Keraf said his office had submitted complaints against five companies to the Attorney General's office a couple of months ago.

"They were taken over by the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy last month. So we can only wait now. We can only follow and obey the procedures," he said. (hdn)