When the government’s moratorium on deforestation expires on May 20,
forest areas in Papua province will be in peril, activists say.
Kiki
Taufik from Greenpeace Indonesia said that Ministerial Decree No.
458/2012 issued in August last year stipulated that around 800,000
hectares of forest in Papua, including protected forest would be
converted into productive forest and other utilization area (APL). He
urged the government to extend the moratorium and revise the decree.
“By issuing the decree, it seems that the ministry was preparing to open
up the forest area for businesses ahead of the expiry date of the
two-year moratorium map,” Kiki said in a press conference on Thursday.
Teguh
Surya, the forest political campaigner for Greenpeace Indonesia, said
that the decree would pave the way for the rezoning of 376,535 hectares
of forest areas into non-forest zone, as well as the conversion of
392,535 hectares of protected forest into productive forest.
“Even
though the decree also stipulates a conversion of around 41,000
hectares of non-forest areas into forest areas, it is not comparable to
the protected forests converted into productive forest and APL,” Teguh
said. “Moreover, the non-forest area could not replace the function of
primary forest, because its destruction could endanger the province’s
water management as well as ecological system,” he added.
Papua
has 25 million hectares of protected areas followed by Kalimantan with
14 million hectares and Sumatra with 13 million hectares.
Around
90 percent of 31.9 million hectares of land in Papua province is still
forest. However, Kiki said, half already have the status of productive
forest or APL, which, if the ministry did not revise the decree, would
soon be utilized for concessions.
Recently, environmental
activists called on the Forestry Ministry to reject the draft spatial
planning bylaw proposed by the Aceh administration, that would allow the
conversion of around 1.2 million hectares of its existing 3.78 million
hectares of protected forests into productive forests.
“Should
the government continue with its plan to convert protected forests in
Papua, we are afraid it would help the Aceh administration get approval
for its new spatial planning draft,” Teguh said. “This means Indonesia
faces losing a total of 2 million hectares of protected forest within a
short period of time.”
Separately, the Association for Community
and Ecology Based Law Reform (Huma) program coordinator Anggalia Putri
said the decree violated the president’s commitment to the protection of
forests, including the establishment of Reducing Emission from
Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+). She said the forest conversion
would trigger conflict between local communities and business
practitioners in Papua.
“Around 65 percent of agrarian conflict is linked to the conversion of forest areas into plantations.”