Scientists worry about coastal destruction

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The ecology of the Indonesian coastal zone is in danger due to non-sustainable development in both upland and marine areas, oceanographic experts said on Wednesday.

According to Jan Sopaheluwakan of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), the coastal zone -- the meeting point between land and ocean -- is rich with natural resources but prone to environmental damage.

"To save the coastal area we need an integrated approach which includes sustainable development from the mountain tops to the bottom of the sea, as well as the empowerment of the people," he said during a two-day symposium held by LIPI.

Another speaker at the symposium, Dietrich G. Bengen of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), underlined that Indonesia's coastal zone was originally characterized by its vast mangrove forests and coral reefs.

The coastal zone is unique because it has become the container of either human litter or the sand and sediment brought to the sea by rivers, and because of its multiple use where everybody has access to its exploitation with no regulations to control it, said Bengen.

"Now such exploitation has caused problems, especially because most of big cities in the country lie in the coastal area," he said.

Data from 1995 showed that the mangrove forests, mostly covering the 81,000 square kilometers of the country's coastal zone, had been reduced to only 2.5 million hectares from 4.2 million hectares in 1985.

The damage either resulted from construction, off-shore mining or sea pollution.

The latest data in 2000 revealed that 70 percent of the country's 85,000 square kilometers of coral reefs had been badly damaged by sea pollution, the rampant use of explosives in fishing and the exploitation of the reefs' economic value.

In Semarang, the capital of Central Java, coastal zone damage has caused abrasion. This situation can also be seen along the eastern coast of Java, with the loss of mangrove forests being the main reason.

The exploitation of the coastal zone has been blamed for the flooding in Jakarta earlier this year and a decrease in the capital's land surface.

Sopaheluwakan said scientists in the Indonesian Consortium on Coastal and Marine Research (ICoMar) would begin an expedition along the Mahakam Delta in East Kalimantan, called the "hot spot" of coastal zone destruction despite the province's status as the country's richest, in terms of natural resources.

"In our recommendation to the government, we will ask the government to stop the exploitation of the coastal zone until rehabilitation is undertaken and perpetrators (of the exploitation) are prosecuted under the law," he said.