When President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo began his tenure in 2014, he uttered his wish to finish a number of infrastructure projects immediately, including the construction of a highway and a railway in Kalimantan. With dense forests, mountains and many rivers, Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the Borneo island, is faced with transportation problems that have increased production costs. According to the Public Works and Housing Ministry, there were only 6,363 kilometers of main roads connecting cities and provinces across Kalimantan in 2014 and only 68 percent of them were in good condition. The construction of roads in Kalimantan started in 2015 and, recently, concerns were raised by experts who said that such infrastructure projects were “the world’s scariest environmental threat” and could impact the lives of rare animal species such as orangutans and ...