Tales of two environmental project disasters
(1) The Mega-Rice Land Conversion Project
This project, which commenced in January 1996, involved the wholesale destruction of about one million hectares of forested peatland in order to clear the area prior to its conversion to a plantation for rice cultivation. Two and a half years after this scheme began, it became apparent that it would never achieve its objectives and the President of Indonesia, B.J. Habibie, reversing the decision of his predecessor Soeharto, canceled the project.
At present, the area is the subject of intensive evaluation by Indonesian scientists, ministries and agencies to try to decide what to do with this vast damaged landscape so that something can be salvaged from the mess that has been created. The evaluation team must report their findings and recommendations to the President by the end of March 1999, but, so far, there is little agreement about what should be done.
There is a strong school of thought, however, that believes it was widely known beforehand that this inhospitable peatland area could never support the intensive rice cultivation that was proposed for the area. It has been suggested that all along the mega-rice project was a barefaced scam to raid the Ministry of Forestry Reforestation Fund and to deforest large areas of peatland wilderness in order to provide vast profits for a few business tycoons.
By the time this project was halted around Rp 3 trillion (US$500 million) had been squandered and there is still not a single blade of productive rice growing anywhere. The Ministry of Public Works has excavated over 4,000 km of drainage and irrigation channels, most of the forest has been irreparably destroyed and the fires that spread through Indonesia in 1997 and 1998 have devastated what remains of the area. In spite of the official embargo on further logging within this area, the channels are now providing easy entry into the formerly inaccessible peat swamp forest hinterland and have become the conduits for illegal loggers to remove their free booty by floating logs to the nearest river.
(2) The Natural Laboratory for the Sustainable Management of Tropical Peat Swamp Forests
One of the last great expanses of wilderness remaining on this planet is the peat swamp forest that occupies some 1.5 million hectares between the Kahayan and Mentaya Rivers in Central Kalimantan. This vast peat-covered landscape supports a unique forest type that is home to a very large bio-diversity of habitat-endemic trees (at least 250 species) and a myriad of animals, many of which are still unknown to science. More than a dozen tree species are of major economic value and most of the remaining species have not had their potential importance to man assessed.
This wilderness area is also home to one of the largest populations of orangutans in Indonesia, for which the peat swamp forest has become their last major refuge. The total number of orangutans remaining on this planet is reported to have fallen from 20,000 two years ago to only 15,000 today, so the government of the Central Kalimantan province has a major responsibility to protect these large primates and the habitat they need to survive. In spite of this urgency for wildlife protection, illegal logging is taking place (illegally but with official knowledge and sanction) around the perimeter of the peat swamp forest area, and extending several kilometers into the peat swamp forest from every possible access point.
The Natural Laboratory for the Sustainable Management of Tropical Peat Swamp Forests is located on the northern edge of this forested peatland landscape, near Palangka Raya, the provincial capital of Central Kalimantan. This laboratory does primary research on the functions of this threatened ecosystem. The governor of Central Kalimantan, on July 22, 1998, declared its official establishment as an international field research facility allied to the Center for International Cooperation for Sustainable Management of Tropical Peatlands which is headquartered at the University of Palangka Raya.
-- Dr. Jack Rieley