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Govt mulls plan to privatize conservation
The government has raised plans to encourage the private sector to manage protected forests to ensure sustainable financing for conservation efforts
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he government has raised plans to encourage the private sector to manage protected forests to ensure sustainable financing for conservation efforts.
The conservation forests include about 33 million hectares of national parks, natural reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and hunting parks, currently the country’s only biodiversity havens.
The idea comes as the government intensively promotes the regeneration of degraded production forests in an effort to conserve biodiversity and limit the effects of climate change.
“Developers could build facilities such as sky trains or hotels in conservation forests without harming the environment,” said director of biodiversity protection at Forestry Ministry, Hari Santoso.
“People should pay to enjoy the natural beauty of conservation forests. The money can then be used to conserve the forests and hopefully generate income for the government.”
He said the permits to manage conservation forests could be awarded to the private sector or state-owned companies.
“A number of business people, including from foreign countries have shown interest in investing in our forests, but we can’t give them permits due to regulation,” he said.
According to the 1990 Biodiversity, Conservation and Ecosystem Law, the only permissible human intervention in conservation forests is for education or research.
“We are waiting for a revision of the law,” he said. “Conservation will no longer be the government’s burden”.
A public consultation on the plan to revise the law was made at an international conference on orangutan protection last week in Bali.
The revision was led by the National Forestry Council. “We have been very strict with conservation forests, while the government has insufficient funds to meet sustainable development targets,” Hari said.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says conservation and restoration of forests could reduce emissions at a low cost and meet sustainable development.
It said restoration activities could also combat land degradation and conserve biodiversity.
The ministry earlier admitted the budget’s lack of funds allotted to manage the national parks.
Indonesia has 50 national parks with average budget of only US$2 per hectare, far lower than Malaysia with $18 per hectare and the US, with $40 per hectare.
Minister Zulkifli Hasan has promised to allocate some 300,000 hectares per year to ecosystem restoration projects from the ex-production forest concessions (HPH).
Greenomics Indonesia strongly rejected the plan permitting the private sector to manage conservation areas, saying it could further accelerate forest degradation.
Greenomics’ executive director Elfian Effendi said the government should learn from the poor performance of the HPH and the industrial timber concessions (HTI) despite their obligation to protecting the forest.
“Our survey found that about 84 percent of the HPH and HTI have shown poor performances in protecting the forest,” he said.
He said the Forestry Law clearly stipulated the permits required to manage forests. “It is not an easy job to manage national parks,” he said.
National park management falls under the jurisdiction of the National Park Authority, while other conservation areas are managed by the Nature Resource Conservation Authority, which directly answers to the director general of nature conservation and forest protection at the Forestry Ministry.
