I

n the fight for a better environment, one cannot be sacrificed for the preservation of others.

That was the premise of a pro-environment coalition, which is urging the government to find areas outside natural forests for their land swap program that aims to restore peatland.

The Environment and Forestry Ministry issued a series of regulations to speed up peat land restoration following the devastating fires in 2015 that destroyed 2.6 million hectares of forests and peat land.

One of the regulations was the land swap scheme for industrial forest firms.

Under the scheme, the concessionaires of industrial vegetation forests (HTI) whose concession areas are made up of at least 40 percent of protected peatland, are required to restore it and in return the government would give them other land as compensation.

More than 900,000 ha have been earmarked for HTI firms.

A group called the Anti-Forest Mafia Coalition claimed that after studying the regulations, they found that roughly 40 percent of the earmarked land were natural forests.

The coalition said 362,390 ha located on most of the main islands, except Java, would be affected under the scheme they called legal deforestation.

Kalimantan would be the most affected should the land swap scheme come into effect, said Syahrul Fitra, the spokesman of environmental group Auriga Nusantara.

The group along with the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia and Papua Forest Watch make up the coalition.

Its data shows that around 95,810 ha of natural forest in Kalimantan could be affected along with 82,915 ha in Sumatra and 69,432 ha in Papua.

“We hope that the government can find another way to protect peatland without having to risk our existing natural forests,” Syahrul said.

The move to use the natural forests was contradictory to the ministry’s initial statement to allocate only unproductive concession areas, he added.

The coalition has identified at least 1.1 million ha of existing industrial forests that are currently inactive.

“If the land swap policy must be carried out, land allocations should come from these areas, which are already allocated as industrial forests,” Syahrul said.

The move to use natural forests is inconsistent with the government’s commitment to realize the United Nations’ target to increase forest areas by 3 percent worldwide by 2030 — an increase of 12 million ha — as forests can greatly contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Speaking about the land swap program, the Environment and Forestry Ministry’s secretary-general, Bambang Hendroyono, said the ministry was not currently focusing on the matter.

He added that none of the HTI concessionaires, who are eligible for the land swap program, had asked for land compensation as of today.