Tuesday 26 January 2010

Central Kalimantan Actively Involved In Environment Conservation

January 26, 2010

Central Kalimantan Actively Involved In Environment Conservation

By Nashir Mansor

PALANGKA RAYA (Central Kalimantan), Jan 26 (Bernama) -- The province of Central Kalimantan is committed to environment conservation apart from developing its plantation sector.

Its Deputy Governor Ir. Achmad Diran said environment conservation was of upmost priority because of the current global warming.

" We are very concerned about this issue as the entire world is concerned about climatic change.

" Recently, there was a delegation from the United States which came to view our environment conservation activities carried out here.

" We brought them to our sprawling 572,000 hectare National Park and they were taken aback when they saw our vast forest reserves," he told a Malaysian delegation of journalists and businessmen from Sabah who are on a 10-day visit to Kalimantan.

The visit, sponsored by Berjaya Foundation and coordinated by the Indonesian Counsulate in Kota Kinabalu, is to explore investment prospects in Kalimantan and to forge close ties between Malaysia and Indonesia.

Achmad said 56 per cent of Central Kalimantan was still under forest reserves, forest research and commerical forest while the remainder was set aside to be developed into plantations.

He said 10.3 million hectares of land in Central Kalimantan was gazetted as forest reserves which cannot be developed.

-- BERNAMA

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