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
