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Govt sets eyes on East Kalimantan

Following the trips of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to Kalimantan in his quest to find a new capital city, the government has inclined to pick Bukit Soeharto in East Kalimantan, which is seen as a more favorable option

Ghina Ghaliya and N. Adri (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta/Balikpapan
Sat, May 18, 2019

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Govt sets eyes on East Kalimantan

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span>Following the trips of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to Kalimantan in his quest to find a new capital city, the government has inclined to pick Bukit Soeharto in East Kalimantan, which is seen as a more favorable option.

With an international airport and a seaport, the province is more promising than Central Kalimantan, which is consisted of vast fire-prone peat forests.

National Development Planning Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said the only weakness of East Kalimantan was that several areas near river upstreams were prone to floods and lack clean water systems.

The location in Central Kalimantan, he said, was too far from a seaport, had limited availability of groundwater resources as there was only river water available, and the peat in most of its areas were vulnerable to forest and land fires.

Bambang said the government might have to build parts of the areas in Bukit Soeharto, which is registered as a conservation area, but said that it would not take all parts of the hill.

According to a 2007 Forestry Ministry regulation, Bukit Soeharto has been declared a grand forest park, which functions as a conservation area.

“It is impossible for us to fully develop the protected area [...] It is possible to use the land around the hill so that it will later become a part of the city’s territory […] The President has committed to protecting the hill,” Bambang said.

After studying options for a new capital outside Jakarta for years, the Jokowi administration decided to take another step with the plan earlier this month, amid ballot count progress that showed that he was on course to secure his reelection.

On May 7, Jokowi visited Bukit Soeharto, which is a 61,850-hectare forest located in North Panajam Paser Utara and Kutai Kartanegara regencies. He later moved to Central Kalimantan where he visited three locations: provincial capital Palangkaraya, Katingan regency and Gunung Mas regency.

East Kalimantan Governor Isran Noor had proposed Bukit Soeharto as the new capital location considering its size and access.

The hill is located near the mid-point of the toll road connecting Samarinda and Balikpapan, the two largest cities in the province, both of which have airports.

But criticism has been rife about the plan, since the development would cause more deforestation. As home to the world’s third-largest area of rainforest after the Amazon and Africa’s Congo Basin, Indonesia has come under fire for massive deforestation and haze problems over the years.

Urban planning expert from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Ibnu Syabri said looking at the government’s review of the two provinces, it was evindent that the government was not only looking for a new administrative center but also an economic growth center.

He said Central Kalimantan indeed had more problems than East Kalimantan. Moreover, to boost the economy, the new capital city should have an accessible sea area to support people’s economic activities.

The front yard of East Kalimantan is the Makassar Strait, a part of the Archipelagic Sea Lanes of Indonesia (ALKI II) that can be passed by large-tonnage merchant ships from across the world under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Ibnu said if the government had to choose East Kalimantan, it should make the city a green city, given that there had been a lot of forest damage in the province in the last 20 years. “If the government would choose, we suggest the capital be a green city.”

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) program manager in East Kalimantan Niel Makinuddin did not support the government developing the capital on a hill. “Sedimentation [in water bodies] could increase when many trees and forests are cleared. As a result, the fish will disappear and millions of fishermen will be affected.”

He said there were seven watersheds flowing around the hill that lead to the Mahakam River, Makassar Strait and Balikpapan Bay, so that the hill was a source for clean water in three East Kalimantan regions: Balikpapan, Samarinda and Kutai Kartanegara.

“Interfering in Bukit Soeharto means torturing people in the three regions. Let alone turning it into a capital city. A small-scale disturbance to the hill can have a real impact,” he said.

He said the government should find another place that would have minimum environmental damage around the Balikpapan-Samarinda-Kutai Kartanegara-North Penajam Paser circle.

Bambang agreed with the urban forest concept and sustainability principles, but still saw Bukit Soeharto as the best option.

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