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fforts to save forests do not always bear fruit for forest-rich areas, as conservation often hinders authorities from converting the forests into industrial land, while at the same time, a significant amount of funds is needed to preserve nature.

Kapuas Hulu regency in West Kalimantan, for example, has been carrying the challenging task of maintaining forests within its region, which account for more than 50 percent of the regency’s total area of 31,000 square-kilometers. Most of the forests are conservation and protected areas.

Kapuas Hulu, which declared itself a conservation regency in 2004, is not allowed to build infrastructure on the protected areas or convert them into plantation or mining areas.

“We are the lungs of the world, but we’ve also become poor as a consequence [because we can’t monetize our natural resources],” Kapuas Hulu Regent Abang M. Nasir said in a conference held to discuss the issue in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The conference, initiated by the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI) and Indonesian Young Academy of Science (ALMI), brought the topic into the spotlight, attempting to find a middle way to help forest-rich regions responsible for high-cost conservation projects.

“Meanwhile, these regions also miss out on their chance to earn higher revenues through, for example, issuing permits for plantations and mining areas,” said Sonny Mumbunan, a researcher from the University of Indonesia’s Research Center for Climate Change (RFCCC UI).

“These regions don’t earn any incentives from what they have done. This will harm any measure to conserve and protect forests,” he added.

Sonny proposed an alternative, introducing the concept of “regional fiscal transfer” which he believes can help forest-rich regions in their efforts to preserve forests. The mechanism, as presented in his paper General Allocation Funds for Forest-Rich Regencies, will enable these regions to receive funds under the General Allocation Funds (DAU) scheme. The amount of the funds will depend on the land size of both primary and secondary forest cover.

In the proposed scheme, the amount of DAU depends on, among other things, a region’s area index, which is determined by the total land size of the region as and the size of the sea in respective territories.

“Apart from eliminating discrepancies in fiscal abilities among forest-rich areas, the funds will also serve as an incentive for regions to protecting their forests — something that has been absent for a long time,” he said.

Dozens of local leaders from forest-rich regencies attending the conference welcomed the suggestion, believing that it is in line with their “intention and commitment to preserve and restore forests and any resources within them”, according to the communique produced at the end of the event.

East Kalimantan’s Berau Regent Muharram appreciated the proposal, saying that it should be introduced as a national regulation.

“I believe this could fuel the spirit [of leaders] to re-green Indonesia,” he said.

The communique also urged the government — including the Finance Ministry, Home Ministry, Environment and Forestry Ministry, and National Development Planning Ministry — to issue regulations that support the fiscal transfer mechanism.

The government, however, has yet to show its full support for the proposal.

While appreciating the suggestion, the Home Ministry’s regional budget supervision director general, Syarifuddin, said the government would need to enforce mandatory spending for activities or programs related to forest protection, if it decided to run the fiscal transfer scheme.

“This is to ensure that the DAU received for maintaining the forest cover is not spent on projects unrelated to forestry,” Syarifuddin said.

Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry’s fiscal transfer director, Putut Hari Satyaka,suggested the proposal was rather problematic. “The DAU scheme can only comprise general variables [which can apply to all regions], while forest cover is a specific variable,” he said.