Private green spaces help Samarinda exceed 30 percent target

The Samarinda City Environmental Agency has stated that the existence of privately managed green open spaces has effectively helped the city exceed its target for nature conservation areas, reaching over thirty percent. “Overall, combining public and privately owned land, the area of green open space in this city has actually reached more than thirty percent,” said Basuni, Head of Environmental Management and Landscaping at the Samarinda City Environmental Agency, on Saturday. This achievement in green buffer zones has been aided by the high level of compliance among commercial housing developers and managers of other private facilities, such as shopping centres and petrol stations. “The sustainable strategy we always implement is to encourage every business actor to remain disciplined in contributing green open space in every housing project implementation,” Basuni stated. The involvement of private entities has proven vital, considering that urban areas always face land constraints in independently meeting area provision targets. “The biggest challenge and homework for our agency at the moment is realising the provision of public parks, because these ecological instruments are highly expected to function fully over the long term,” he said. The total public green open space in Samarinda City has only reached around 6.8 percent of the total area of 71,800 hectares. This figure is still far from the ideal national target mandated by law of at least 30 percent, consisting of 20 percent public green open space and 10 percent private. “The local government’s undeveloped land assets are projected to open up potential new absorption areas covering more than 2,000 hectares to pursue the spatial plan achievements,” Basuni added. For this reason, land-use collaboration between the private sector and regional assets continues to be accelerated to achieve the green open space target of up to 4,600 hectares based on the Samarinda City Government’s spatial plan.