L

ogging has been prevalent in the Mahakam Delta area for dozens of years.

Large areas of the forest have been logged and converted into fish farms and human settlements.

Eighty-five percent of the Delta area in Kutai Kartanegara regency, East Kalimantan, is classed as environmentally damaged.

East Kalimantan Deputy Governor Farid Wadjdy said the environmental destruction of the Mahakam Delta had been taking place for a very long time and was largely due to negligence.

However, the local administration, stakeholders and residents still have a chance to roll back the damage, he told a workshop on saving the Mahakam Delta, an integrated program for stakeholders at the East Kalimantan gubernatorial office in Samarinda recently.

"The Mahakam Delta is facing serious damage but it is not too late to undo it," Farid said during the workshop named "Save Our Delta", co-organized with mining firm Total E&P Indonesia (Total).

Farid added that the East Kalimantan administration would fully support the group's efforts to make the Mahakam Delta program a success.

"This is not a short-term program, restoring the Mahakam Delta could take more than 10 years. We need to give it our full support so in the future we can restore the sustainability of the Mahakam Delta according to the spatial planning of 70 percent green belt and 30 percent open area," Farid said

"Funds for the program will be submitted to the 2009 budget adjustments and included in the 2010 budget," he added.

Meanwhile, Total president, director and general manager Elisabeth Proust told a news conference that most of the company's operations were conducted in offshore areas in the Makassar Strait, hundreds of kilometers from the Mahakam Delta.

However, in Kutai Kartanegara, Total operates three processing units with pipes crossing the delta area making it a stakeholder in the environmental future of the area.

"We use advanced technology *meaning* we use smaller areas for production wells. This is aimed at minimizing environmental damage. We have also planted around 4 million mangrove seedlings to restore areas that have been damaged by large-scale forest conversion," said Proust.

Total corporate community, government relation and CSR corporate manager Judith Navarro Dipodiputro said the workshop was aimed at synchronizing with the East Kalimantan provincial and Kutai Kartanegara regency administrations, stakeholders and academics to protect the Mahakam Delta in a sustainable manner.

The Mahakam Delta was previously a mangrove area, but large-scale forest conversions have affected fishery production levels in the area.

The Mahakam Delta area is currently included in Kutai Kartanegara regency. The area can only be reached by a two-and-a-half-hour speedboat ride from provincial capital Samarinda.