Indonesia: Appeal likely in palm oil dispute

Michael Bachelard Sydney Morning Herald 4 Apr 12;

THE courts in Aceh have failed to protect a carbon-rich peat forest and critically endangered orang utans from the actions of a palm oil company which Jakarta acknowledges has acted illegally.

After five months of detailed argument, the three-judge court sitting in Banda Aceh threw the case out on jurisdictional grounds, saying the complainants from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) should first have sought mediation with the company.

The lawyer for the complainants, Kamaruddin, said the judges had used the wrong legislation - the environmental law, not administrative law - to make their determination, and said an appeal was likely.

And Riswan Zein, a representative of environmental group Yayasan Ekosistem Lestari, said if the judges were going to insist on mediation, they should have mentioned it earlier in the case, which started last October.

The case began when Aceh's then governor, Irwandi Yusuf, signed a permit in August last year to allow Indonesian palm oil giant PT Kallista Alam to set up a plantation in the environmentally sensitive Tripa peat swamp, seven hours south of Banda Aceh.

Detailed maps presented to the court showed that the concession was part of the Leuser Ecosystem, which is protected from development under Indonesia's 2008 national planning law.

The area is one of the last redoubts of the endangered Sumatran orang utan.

Sumatra-based landscape protection specialist Graham Usher told The Age that the company had begun actively clearing the swamp by burning, which is also illegal under Indonesian law.

A spokesman for Mr Irwandi, who is running for re-election as governor in Monday's Aceh poll, said he respected what the environmental groups had done in bringing the case.

Without resiling from his decision to issue the permit, he said he would "sit down and talk" with the complainants.

Last year Indonesia's secretary-general of the Ministry of Forestry, Hadi Daryanto, told the Jakarta Post that the PT Kallista Alam permit was "clearly a violation because the area in question is a peat forest".

The permit also appears to breach Indonesia's international responsibilities under the REDD+ project, under which Norway has promised to pay the country $US1billion to protect its peat forests as a way of addressing climate change.

Mr Kamaruddin said yesterday the verdict put that payment under threat.

Environmental groups say that, in the last 21 years, about 70 per cent of Tripa's original forest and its orang utan population have been destroyed.

Late last month, another rash of peat forest in the area was burned and drained, prompting a coalition of environment groups to claim that, unless authorities stopped the illegal action, the local population of the Sumatran orang utan "could be extinct in a matter of months, even weeks if a prolonged dry spell were to set in" and fuel the fires.

The orang utan population is estimated at several hundred, of which the environment groups estimate 100 may have died in the fires of recent weeks.

Indonesia Court Refuses to Rule on Important Aceh Peat Swamp Case
Jakarta Globe 4 Apr 12;

Banda Aceh, Indonesia. A court in Aceh in western Indonesia on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit brought by conservationists challenging further development of peat swamp forests they say will threaten the few remaining orangutans who live there.

Indonesia’s largest environmental group, Walhi, wanted the court to revoke a license granted by the Aceh provincial government to palm oil company Kallista Alam. The license allows the company to convert 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of the Tripa peat swamp forest into a palm oil plantation.

Three other palm oil companies already operate in the forest. The Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program has said that orangutans could disappear from Tripa by the year’s end if palm oil companies keep setting land-clearing fires there.

The Tripa forest — which in the early 1990s was home to around 3,000 Sumatran orangutans — today has just 200. There are 6,600 Sumatran orangutans left in the wild, and the Tripa forest has the densest population in the world.

Walhi filed a lawsuit against the head of the Aceh government, Gov. Irwandi Yusuf, arguing that the license given to Kallista Alam would cause environmental destruction and loss of habitat for the endangered species.

But a three-judge panel at the Banda Aceh Administrative Court said it had no authority to rule on the case because the parties involved hadn’t tried to solve the case outside of court.

“Walhi’s complaint could not be accepted,” presiding judge Darmawi said. “We suggest the parties resolve the case outside the court first.”

The pronouncement means the parties could attempt mediation, but Walhi’s lawyer, Kamaruddin, said the group will instead appeal to the high court.

Aceh’s government and Kallista Alam welcomed the judges’ decision.

“It gives us confidence that the issuing of the license has been done in accordance with procedure,” said Saifullah, a provincial government official.

Firman Azwan Lubis, a lawyer representing Kallista, said the company’s application for the license was legal and “based on comprehensive studies about environmental impacts.”

Beside the lawsuit, people living around Tripa also have asked police to investigate whether any environmental crimes were committed in connection with the issuing of a license to Kallista.

Associated Press