Green agency opposes mining in protected forest

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The East Kalimantan Environmental Impact Control Agency (Bapedalda) warned the Kutai Kartangera administration against exploiting the coal deposit on the 61,850-hectare protected Bukit and Sungai Soeharto, saying it would raise serious environmental and economic problems.

"We will not issue a permit, should the Kutai regency administration want to exploit the coal in the protected areas," chief of the local office of the Environmental Impact Control Agency Kaspoel Basran said in Samarinda on Monday.

Kaspoel was responding to the Kutai regency administration's plan to exploit 122 million to 150 million tons of coal in the protected areas. The mining plan has gained approval from the Kutai regency legislative council with the reason that it would not cause any negative impact on the environment of the protected forest areas. Under the regional autonomy law, regency administrations have the authority to explore their natural resources to improve their income.

Kaspoel ruled out the reasons as unacceptable, saying the protected tropical forest areas, a home to rich biodiversity, biomass and rare species, would become a thing of the past should the regency administration exploit the coal.

According to the environmental law, Bapedal, an agency under the jurisdiction of the office of the environment minister, has the authority to issue or refuse permission for any mining activities on the basis of their environmental impacts as set out in a study (Amdal).

Kaspoel said the planned coal mining would certainly harm the protected forests' ecosystem and biodiversity and cause massive erosion that could inundate Samarinda and numerous villages around it.

"The planned coal mining will cause deforestation, affect the forests' function as water catchment areas to prevent flooding and landslides, harm the rich biodiversity and the Mulawarman botanical garden and threaten the rare species of fauna in the forested areas," he said. He added it would also produce large cavities caused by the mining activities and the barren areas would cause massive erosion on the hilly land.

The 61,850-ha forests, which were inaugurated as protected areas on May 20, 1991, were divided into zones of protected forest, safari garden, tourist resort, forest education areas, forest research center managed by Mulawarman University, scout camping areas and a timber museum.

The presence of mining activities in the forest would almost certainly promote new housing development and other human activities that would have a detrimental effect on the forested areas and their ecosystem.

"That is why the regency administration should review its decision to exploit the coal deposit because it will cause suffering both to the environment and people in the province. The local administration should consider not only the financial advantages but also the material losses to the environment and to humanity," Antara news agency quoted Kaspoel as saying.

With financial assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Ministry of Education and Culture has designated the protected forest as a research station operated by Mulawarman University.

The Kutai regency legislature has thrown its weight behind the planned mining as the forest areas contained "hot spots" (areas on fire) based on the coal deposits and fossil fuels, which could trigger fires in the forests.

But the United States-based Office of Surface Mining (OSM) has provided modern technology to extinguish the hot spots by burying them with noncombustible material after they have been excavated.

So far, at least 80 hot spots have been extinguished.