Govt must think twice in plantation plan
Govt must think twice in plantation plan
Anissa S. Febrina, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Transparency and public consultation on the details of the
project are needed before the government carries out any plan to
create a vast oil palm plantation along the Indonesian-Malaysian
border in Borneo, an NGO says.
Most development comes at a cost to the environment, but those
costs could be minimized by being prudent and transparent.
"We are not against development, but there are ways of doing
it without great environmental damage," non-governmental
organization Greenomics Indonesia executive director Elfian
Effendi said.
"The government must be transparent on the plan before going
through with it," he added.
The remarks were made at a time when the government --
including local administrations -- is moving ahead with the
massive oil palm plantation that was first announced earlier this
year.
Documents obtained by the Greenomics showed that the East
Kalimantan administration had already allocated 215,000 hectares
of land in its three regencies to be cleared as part of the
planned plantation.
That area includes 17,000 hectares of government-funded
community plantations.
The West Kalimantan provincial administration has also
mentioned its version of the plantation's development, although
no further details were available.
The exact locations of the giant plantation has yet to be made
clear in those two provinces' initial proposals, but it would
most likely affect parts of the 2.2 million hectares encompassed
by three national conservation parks along the border with
Malaysia.
The project, which would cover 1.8 million hectares in total,
is expected to require an investment of around Rp 6.45 trillion
(about US$645 million), 98 percent of which would be funded by
private investors.
Environmentalists have previously warned that ecological
losses due to the clearing of natural forests would amount to Rp
27 trillion annually, due to environmental degradation.
"Clearing more land would be damaging to the economy in the
long run, both in Indonesia and in Sarawak (Malaysia)," said
environmentalist Sofyan P. Warsito from Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada
University.
Currently, of the 2.3 million hectares of plantation areas in
West Kalimantan alone, 1.5 million hectares have been abandoned.
They were earlier cleared for plantations that never
materialized.
"If it were truly for development, the government must make
sure that it would affect the 300,000 local inhabitants there in
the long run and not merely be a temporary project," Elfian
added.
A Greenomics' study shows there might be additional economic
motives, apart from the yields to be gained from the planned
project.
The economic value of timber on both natural and production
forest in the border area, which will have to be clear cut,
amounts to Rp 212.9 trillion and Rp 24.8 trillion, respectively.