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Letter: Deforestation in Kalimantan
I refer to an article titled “967 forestry firms under govt scrutiny” (The Jakarta Post, Feb
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I refer to an article titled “967 forestry firms under govt scrutiny” (The Jakarta Post, Feb. 2).
I think the massive forest conversion in Central Kalimantan was started by and is the responsibility of the central government. Let’s take as an example the opening up of 1 million hectares of pristine peatland forests for agriculture fields, which was well known as the “Mega Rice Project”, in Central Kalimantan.
From a regulation perspective, the ex-“Mega Rice Project” has violated at least two central government regulations, namely: The presidential regulation concerning the conservation of deep peat (peat deeper than 3 meters is not allowed to be opened or converted) and the Forestry Law on forest status release permits.
The central government has done massive forest clearing in the area without first receiving forest release licenses (release of forest status into non-forest status). Hence, the ex-“Mega Rice Project” can be classified as an illegal activity at present.
In addition, more than 40 percent of the ex-“Mega Rice Project” was constituted of very deep and deep peats, but the central government still converted this deep peat into agricultural fields, where, up to now, there was not one single rice paddy growing in the opened deep peatlands.
From the two cases above, it is clear to us that the central government often breaks its own regulations and then tries to shift the responsibility of the messy problems they created to the local governments, or claim causation from autonomy policies.
Another case in point, the central government is now seeing some palm oil plantation concessions operating in the ex-“Mega Rice Project” grounds as illegal plantation activities, as they have not received any forest area release permits from the Forestry Ministry.
I think this conclusion is somewhat weird and unfair as I mentioned above that even the ex-“Mega Rice Project” itself was considered an illegal activity, as it had no forest status release permits itself. Hence, it is not fair if the central government just blames local governments for the current problems happening on the ground without seriously reflecting on its own messy policies.
Alue Dohong
Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan
