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Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat nominated for world heritage
The 105,000 hectare Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst in East Kalimantan has since May this year been listed as one of the five most-likely candidates to be declared a world heritage site by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
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he 105,000 hectare Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst in East Kalimantan has since May this year been listed as one of the five most-likely candidates to be declared a world heritage site by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
'It takes time for a site to be declared world heritage,' East Kalimantan Environmental Agency head Riza Indra Riadi said on Wednesday.
Riza said that if it was selected, the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst would be the first world heritage site in Kalimantan, adding that the listing would attract the world's attention and increase the region's access to development aid funding.
With the world heritage status, he said, the karst would likely become a tourist attraction that would in turn improve the economy of the local community, similarly to what happened to communities around the Borobudur Temple in Central Java.
He said that a biological expedition conducted in 2004 by The Nature Conservancy and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) had identified 120 bird species, 200 insects, a giant cockroach species, 50 species of fish and 400 flora species in the area.
'They even found an orangutan habitat in the area, in Gunung Beriun to be precise,' Riza said.
Other unique features of Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst include caves where paintings and fragments of human skeletons have been found.
An archeological study dated paintings in the cave to around 6,000 BC, when humans were already living in the dry caves.
According to Kahar Al Bahri of the Mining Advocacy Network's East Kalimantan branch, the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst is the source of the five main rivers in Berau and East Kutai regencies, namely the Tabalar, Lesan, Pesab, Bengalon and Karangan Rivers, which are the main source of water for the local people.
'The karst area supports over 100,000 people living [...] in the two regencies,' Kahar said.
Unfortunately, he said that as of December this year, only 99,910 hectares of the area had been allocated for preservation by the East Kalimantan spatial planning (RTRW) agency, out of the province's total area of 1.86 million hectares.
According to the RTRW, he said, 150,000 hectares of the area would be turned into concession areas for limestone, clay and cement factories.
'Even without mining, the economy [of the area] growth can still grow through environmental tourism,' Kahar said.
The Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst stretches from Kelay district to the Biatan, Talisayan, Batu Putih and Biduk-biduk districts in Berau regency. It also includes Mount Kulat on the border of Berau and East Kutai regencies.
In East Kutai, the karst covers a number of districts including Kongbeng, Bengalon, Karangan, Kaubun, Sandaran, Sangkulirang and Kaliorang.
So far, Indonesia has eight sites on the World Heritage List: four are cultural sites and the rest are natural sites.
The four cultural sites are the Borobudur Temple in Central Java, the Subak plantation system in Bali, the Prambanan Temple in Central Java and the Sangiran archaeological site in Central Java. The natural sites are Komodo National Park in East Nusa Tenggara, Lorentz National Park in Papua, Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra and the Ujung Kulon National Park in Banten.
