Nature Alert: Highway plan in Indonesia's Papua threatens forests: NGOs

Thursday, 26 June 2008

Highway plan in Indonesia's Papua threatens forests: NGOs

Highway plan in Indonesia's Papua threatens forests: NGOs

JAKARTA (AFP) — An Indonesian plan to build a highway through the forests of Papua risks opening the door to massive deforestation in the jungle-clad half-island, environment groups said Wednesday.

The 4,500 kilometre (2,796 mile) Trans-Papua highway between the provinces of Papua and West Papua would lead to an explosion in palm oil plantations and allow easy access for illegal loggers, Greenpeace and Papuan NGOs said in a statement.

The planned road "would not only result in irreversible biodiversity loss and consequent ecological disaster, it will have a devastating impact on the lives and livelihood of the Papuan people," Greenpeace campaigner Bustar Maitar said.

The NGOs urged the government to properly consult local Papuans before going ahead with highway, which is the cornerstone of a 2007 plan by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to develop the resource-rich but impoverished provinces.

The plan comes as Indonesian officials eye Papua's vast wilderness as a potential site for more palm oil plantations to cash in on voracious global demand for the crop.

Palm oil plantations could be created on between three and four million hectares (up to 9.8 million acres) of suitable land in the two provinces, an agriculture ministry official told AFP in May.

Indonesia, the world's largest palm oil producer, also has one of the highest levels of deforestation, with weak law enforcement and widespread corruption allowing illegal landclearing and logging to flourish.

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.