Tales of two environmental project disasters

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