Tourism, housing threaten forest in Bandung
Tourism, housing threaten forest in Bandung
Yuli Tri Suwarni
The Jakarta Post
Bandung
A massive tourism and housing project is threatening a forest and
the water supply to the West Java provincial capital of Bandung.
If Bandung regency goes ahead with its plans, hundreds of
hectares of forest in Lembang district will be cleared to develop
an 800-hectare tourism and residential area in the mountainous
resort, which functions as the water catchment area that supplies
water to Bandung municipality.
The provincial legislative council has strongly urged the
provincial administration to take the necessary measures to stop
the project or otherwise Lembang would be turned into a "desert",
natural disasters such floods and landslides would increase in
Bandung regency, and the supply of water to densely-populated
Bandung municipality would come under threat.
Meanwhile, Bogor regent Obar Sobarna has turned a deaf ear to
the provincial legislative council and the increasing protests
voiced by many sides, including environmental activists, saying
that the project was in line with the local land use plan as set
out in local regulation No. 12/2001, which allows the regency
administration to use 800 hectares of forest to develop a complex
of four-star hotels, entertainment centers and residential
compounds.
"The regency administration has appointed PT Baru Ajak, a
construction company, to develop the project and commission an
environmental impact analysis," he said here recently.
Serious environmental problems emerged in the North Bandung
hill resort in 1995 when the regency administration allowed the
development of luxury homes in the area. These developments were
widely blamed for subsequent flooding and landslides in the
regency.
Yudi Widiana Adia, a member of the provincial legislative
council, lambasted Sobarna as being unscrupulous, saying he had
manipulated the local regulation for commercial purposes.
"The regent should resort to lateral thinking and stop these
projects as besides contradicting the regulation, they will
entail a host of adverse consequences for the public and the
environment.
"Under current conditions, Lembang is no longer able to
fulfill its support functions for Bandung municipality, and
floods and landslides have hit the regency almost every year over
the past decade," he said, adding that a recent landslide had
claimed the lives of six people in the regency.
He noted that at the present time, North Bandung could absorb
60 percent of the rainfall that fell and supply 1.7 billion cubic
meters of water, whereas the city of five million people actually
needed 7 billion cubic meters of water per day.
He said the provincial legislature would ask Governor Danny
Setyawan to take the necessary action so as to avoid a further
deterioration in the environment in North Bandung, and more
natural disasters and water crises in the city.
Yudi said that the relevant regency regulation contradicted
provincial regulation No. 2/2003 on the provincial land use plan.
"Both the regent and the regency legislative council should
stick to the land use plan issued by the provincial
administration," he said, citing that the province's land use
plan recommended the development of an agribusiness center to
improve the welfare of vegetable growers in Lembang district.
He also said that according to Article 82 of the provincial
regulation, the governor was responsible for coordinating the
regulation of land use in the border areas between one regency
and other regency, and between a regency and a municipality.
"Besides, the provincial administration has prohibited
developers from constructing residential areas in the hill
resort," he said, referring to Gubernatorial Decree No. 181/1982,
which provides that North Bandung is a conservation area and off-
limits to further housing development.
Yadi Srilulyadi, Bandung regency legislative council speaker,
said the legislative council was not aware of the project and, in
any case, it could not stop it as the local development planning
board (Bappeda) had issued a permit giving the go-ahead.
Mudji Raharto, the director of the Bosscha Astronomical
Observatory, also objected to the projects, which he said would
adversely affect the observatory's research work.