Indonesian Ministry Unveils Environmental Road Map to Save Sumatra Forests

Fidelis E Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 13 May 10;

Officials in Sumatra who plan to engage in forest conversion activities need to check their proposals against a new set of guidelines specifically aimed at preserving the region’s ecosystem, the Ministry of Forestry said this week.

During Tuesday’s introduction of these guidelines, called The Road Map for Saving the Sumatra Ecosystem: Sumatra’s Vision 2020, key government agencies were joined by all 10 provincial governors of Sumatra and agreed to be more vigilant about saving the island’s ecosystem.

“I know that all the governors have shown their commitment to consider this road map into spatial planning. It will only make our job easier,” Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said.

If any provincial official would come forward with a proposal that had the potential to harm the environment, such as displacing elephant and tigers from their natural habitats to give way to plantations, Zulkifli said, such plans would immediately be rejected. “We will check the guidelines to ensure that some areas will not be converted for any such purpose,” he said.

For their first project, the governors chose Bukit Barisan, a 1,700-kilometer mountain range that runs the entire length of Sumatra, to carry out the environment road map.

Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto said the regulations were drafted with respect to the region’s spatial planning, so that territorial boundaries would not overlap. He added that similar plans were being prepared for Kalimantan, Java and Sulawesi.

Emil Salim, an adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on the environment and sustainable development, said local governments needed to be monitored in order for ecosystem-based spatial planning to work.

At the national level, Emil added, ministries were continually engaged in dialogue, but such concern was not seen on the local level.

“The road map is definitely a good idea, because it shows the governors’ initiative in terms of saving Sumatra’s natural resources,” Emil said.

“However, it must not end there. The challenge is to be able to enforce these guidelines on the lower administrative levels.”

Hermien Roosita, deputy minister for spatial planning and pollution-control management at the State Ministry for the Environment, said such a task needed time to accomplish.

“At the beginning, we had problems including [lower-level administrative officials] in discussions, but we changed our approach,” Hermien said.

“We started reaching out to three regions first, then everything went more smoothly from there.”

Besides the Forestry Ministry, representatives of the State Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Public Works also attended Tuesday’s conference.

The Sumatra ecosystem road map was declared on Sept. 18, 2008, and was officially published at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in October 2009.