In what’s being called a groundbreaking verdict, the court found
palm oil
company PT Kallista Alam guilty of illegally burning large areas of the
Tripa peat forest in the province of Aceh and ordered it to pay roughly
$30 million in fines. An estimated $20 million was allocated for
restoration efforts. The court also confiscated land and will be
charging a fine for every day the palm oil company delays repayment,
reports the
Environmental News Service.
In 2011 the government placed a two year moratorium on logging in
certain areas, but PT Kallista Alam still got a palm oil concession
permit that year that it shouldn’t have, which was later revoked. The
attention that the company brought to the area and the continued
destruction by several other companies garnered protests from around the
world and calls for greater protection for the peat swamp forests of
Aceh, which include Tripa, Kluet and Singkil.
The case against against PT Kallista Alam was brought by the Ministry
of Environment, and environmentalists are applauding its effort and the
ruling. They believe it will send a strong message to other companies
and hope it will mean improvements in law enforcement efforts to stop
deforestation and protect biodiversity in an area that’s vitally
important for the future survival of critically endangered orangutans,
along with
other species including Sumatran tigers and elephants, Malayan sun bears and rhinos.
“This is a clear message to companies working in Aceh who think they can destroy protected forests and get away with it”
said Muhammad Nur, Chairman of WALHI Aceh (Friends of the Earth Indonesia).
For orangutans, efforts to protect the the Tripa peat forests and
Leuser Ecosystem could be their last hope. There are only an estimated
6,500 orangutans left in Sumatra who continue to face threats from
deforestation, habitat fragmentation caused by roads, the
pet trade and being killed as pests. Conservationists from
Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP) estimate that as many as 100 of Tripa’s orangutans have been killed in fires so far.
“Tripa is one of only 3 remaining peat swamp forests left containing
orangutans in Sumatra and its impossible to overstate the importance of
protecting every last hectare of each of them,”
said Dr. Ian Singleton, SOCP’s director, in a statement.
The Price of Palm Oil
According to the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), nearly 90 percent of
palm oil
is now grown in Indonesia and Malaysia and the growing demand for it
has caused the destruction of some of the earth’s most valuable
rainforests and continues to do so.
International companies
continue
to put palm oil that has been produced at the expense of the Tripa peat
forest and other areas on the market, while its use as a key ingredient
in a
variety of foods has made it virtually inescapable. This past September RAN
called out major food companies, otherwise known as the
Snack Food 20, for not ensuring that their palm oil was conflict free.
While advocacy groups and consumers continue to
pressure companies to do the right thing, environmentalists are still working to get tougher protection for the earth’s irreplaceable rainforests.
The court ruling was a victory, but the Leuser Ecosystem is still in
danger. The government is now under pressure to finalize a controversial
and short-sighted spatial land use plan known as Qanun RTRW Aceh that
would threaten Aceh’s protected forests by opening the door for
palm oil
and timber concessions, mining and the development of roads, which will
fragment precious habitat, encourage development, cause more conflicts
with wildlife and create more access to rare species for hunters.
Not only would this be a huge blow to orangutans and overall
biodiversity, but it will also harm local communities. Environmentalists
predict that further deforestation will lead to natural disasters that
include more flash floods, landslides and erosion, in addition to
destroying livelihoods that are forest-dependent and threatening the
water supply that millions of people rely on for drinking and food
production.
The plan also ignores the environmental and economic benefits that the Leuser Ecosystem provides.
According
to Graham Usher, Landscape Protection Specialist with the Swiss-based
PanEco Foundation, “For Aceh alone these have been valued in excess of
400 million dollars per year, and the region’s contribution to
mitigating climate change, through its carbon sequestration function
probably stretches into billions of dollars.”
Environmental and animal advocacy groups including RAN, SOCP, the
PanEco Foundation and Humane Society International, among others, are
now urging the government to reject this plan, in addition to urging
Aceh’s governor to protect the Leuser Ecosystem as a whole by supporting
its nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Leuser Ecosystem
was recently named one of the
world’s most irreplaceable places and the international community is fighting to ensure that it gets the protection it deserves.
TAKE ACTION!
Please
sign and share the petition
urging Aceh’s governor to protect wildlife and local communities by
supporting a nomination of the Leuser Ecosystem as a World Heritage
site.
