Letter: The failed rice field project

Published on The Jakarta Post (http://www.thejakartapost.com)

The Jakarta Post | Thu, 08/26/2010 5:20 PM | readers forum
I personally welcome the policy on banning of peatland conversion (“Govt says no to converting peatland into plantations”, Aug. 23) to other land uses and I do hope the government is serious and consistent with its policy.
However, apart from banning the conversion of natural peat swamps and forests, I strongly urge the central government to pay serious attention and to implement serious efforts in rehabilitating and restoring the former One Million Hectares Peatland Project in Central
Kalimantan (the so-called ex- Mega Rice Project).
As the central government was the creator of this terrible project, they must take responsibility to rehabilitate and to restore this degraded ecosystem. The ex-Mega Rice Project has created huge economic, sociocultural and environmental negative impacts to the local people for more than 10 years and the central government has
done little on the ground to resolve these problems.
If the Indonesian government will adhere to its commitment to reduce CO2 emission up to 26 percent by the year 2020, about half of this target can be achieved just from dealing with the ex-Mega Rice Project.
With regard to the criteria of peat conservation based on the depth of the peat, the regulation needs to be revised, as this criterion is scientifically unjustified and awkward. The proper criteria are dependent on the type of subsoil underneath the peat. Although the peat depth is just half a meter, for example, the subsoil underneath constitutes a sand layer, thus we need to protect this kind of peatland; otherwise we will create a new desert should we convert it.
As for the government policy on ecosystem restoration, with particular reference to the peatland issue, if this policy is applied to the peat swamp ecosystem, it will create a new problem. Ecosystem restoration only applies to land with production forest status, not with conservation and protection status, which means that ecosystem restoration is intended for increasing forest production in the future e.g. timber. If we promote the ecosystem restoration approach within the peatland/peat swamp forest ecosystem, it will in jeopardize all our efforts to protect the peat swamp forests in the future. It is better to do nothing on the peatland/peat swamp forest ecosystem, if we think of what the policy would really mean.

Alue Dohong
Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan
— JP