Indonesia forest threatened by development despite new rules
JAKARTA, Indonesia — In a remote corner of Borneo, an Indonesian company and its Chinese partner are pushing ahead with an industrial wood plantation in a tropical forest and orangutan habitat, apparently flouting government regulations intended to prevent a repeat of disastrous fires in 2015.
Photos and drone footage taken by activists in late July show an extensive drainage canal full of water, heavy earth-moving equipment on the land and planting of seedlings despite an order in March from the Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya to cease operations.
The exploitation of the 57,000-hectare (140,847-acre) Sungai Putri forest, which is home to as many as 1,200 critically endangered orangutans, and Chinese investment in a related wood-processing plant is supported by provincial and district officials in West Kalimantan on the giant island of Borneo. But it is in conflict with the central government’s unevenly enforced moratorium on the drainage and exploitation of Indonesia’s extensive peatlands, which was instituted after massive dry season fires in 2015.
The fires, which spread across 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) and blanketed parts of Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and southern Thailand in a health-damaging haze, were worsened by El Nino dry conditions but also underlined the huge risks that pulp wood and palm oil companies have taken in draining swampy peatlands for industrial plantations, making the peatlands highly combustible. The World Bank estimated the fires caused losses of $16 billion.