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ug. 7, Online

Following Central Kalimantan Governor Agustin Teras Narang, green activists voiced on Sunday their rejection of the government’s plan to build a 135-kilometer-long railway connecting Central and East Kalimantan.

The railway construction is planned to be funded by Russian interests, which have agreed to invest US$2.5 billion in the project aimed at supporting coal distribution.

The director of the Central Kalimantan chapter of the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi), Arie Rompas, said on Sunday in Palangkaraya that the project could harm not only the environment, as the railway would pass through protected forest areas, but also the safety of people living alongside the Barito and Mahakam rivers.

“The areas that the railway will pass through are catchment areas, so we fear that the infrastructure could destroy the environment,” Arie said, as quoted by kompas.com.

Arie asked the government to review the plan.

Save Our Borneo director Nordin expressed concern over the impacts of coal mining activities in general and the affects the railway might have upon the environment.

Your comments:

Railway will conserve oil and coal and provide a more eco-friendly way of travel than by air or motor vehicle that Indonesia.

Building more railways would provide a stable foundation for the future, improving the economy and livelihood of locals.

I hope that an infrastructure project like this will stimulate further studies to studies such as solar powered locomotives, hydrogen powered, biofuel powered, catchment of CO2 and the like to create an even more sustainable future for our sons and daughters.

Akbar
Vancouver, Canada

I will never understand the mind-set of these green activists. It’s fine if they want to live like Tarzan, but don’t force us to live like him, too.

If you want to protect the forest: Why don’t you collect a large amount of cash to buy hectares of forest so that no one can cut down the trees?

James Newman
London

Looking through a wide lens, Akbar is right that railways would provide a more environmentally friendly mode of transport.

On the other side, however, the frontier spirit of multinational companies would get another boost and open up new possibilities of exploitation of local resources and undercut the sovereignty of Indonesia’s people by corruption and liaison with autocratic authorities. History provides many examples.

Looking through a small lens, one should not consider that such projects might create jobs and are a motor of regional development. Yet, who needs a job if one’s generations-old village is being declared illegal and locals are being forcefully driven out?

Don Quijote
Goettingen, Germany

The green activists are wasting their time. “Russian interests that have agreed to invest US$2.5 billion in the project.”

You think that the Indonesian government is going to turn all that money down just to protect the environment? It happens only if you are living in La La Land.

Sheldon
Probolinggo, East Java