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This briefing in pdf-format Huge
New Pulp-wood Plantation Threatening Swamp Forests of Riau, Indonesia
The proposed concession spreads over three districts (kabupaten): Pelalawan, Siak and Bengkalis. The concession is divided into two blocks: Serapung on the mainland (about 151 000 ha) and Padang Island on the island of Padang (about 64 000 ha). APRIL plans to acquire 3.2 million cubic meters of wood from natural forests in the concession annually for 7 years after starting conversion. As APRIL's current demand for raw material is 9.5 million cubic meters, the proposed concession would supply one third of the pulp mill's annual need while natural forests are being logged.
Figure
1. Forest cover of western Indonesia and Malaysia in 2002 (Stibig et al. 2002).
The white rectangle shows the location of figure 2 and the proposed concessions
of APRIL.
>>> Larger version of the same image Figure 2. Proposed concessions of APRIL (red line). In the background Citra Landsat satellite picture from the year 2002, showing land use in the area (dark green areas are natural forests, blue is water and pink is recent land clearing). White star shows the place of figures 4-6. Map by Jikalahari.
Much of the concession area has experienced various degrees of selective logging and small parts of it have been cleared. Past loggers have dug canals in the peat swamp to transport logs, and these canals are now used by illegal loggers. No valid selective logging permits exist in the area at the moment. At least in the south along river Kampar the proposed concession area is experiencing large scale, organised illegal logging. The forests are largely not in natural state, but they remain clearly closed forests, viable and well stocked even with commercial tree species. Loggers in the south of the concession extract large quantities of meranti (Shorea spp.) and other species, but still much is left standing in the forest (field research in July 2004, fig. 3-5). Government forestry regulation (e.g. UU 41/1999) states that only or preferably degraded, very low stocked forests and barren land should be converted to industrial tree plantations. Such areas are abundant in Riau, but this clearly disqualifies most of the forest in the proposed concession area for plantation development. Unfortunately, this is one of the most commonly broken principles of forestry law by government and companies alike. APRIL has a 10-year history of forest conversion for pulp. Indonesian
law also regulates use of peat swamp areas. Regulations (Keppres 32/1990, PP 47/1997)
state that all areas on peet more than 3 meters in depth should be designated
as protection areas. Unfortunately, these regulations have never been implemented
either.
Figure 3. Map of peat soil thickness in the coast of Riau. Proposed concession of APRIL is marked with a red line. The mainland concession sector is situated mostly on very thick peat soil (> 4 m). Base map Wetlands Int. & CIDA (2003). The legend in the right shows the colour codes used for different classes of peat thickness (<50 cm, 50-100 cm, 100-200 cm, 200-400 cm, >400 cm) and quality.
There is a poor record of agriculture on deep peat soils in Indonesia. They are generally poor in nutrients, and have commonly turned into barren land after conversion. While the pulp companies in Riau have been successful in planting peat swamps with acacia, no reliable information exists on their long-term sustainability (Barr 2001). However, there is clear evidence that peat swamp plantations require higher investments, have lower production and are in higher risk of fire, diseases and tree mortality due to topping than plantations on mineral soils (Cossalter 2004). Chances are that plantation yields sink over time even resulting in barren land – future of these plantations is uncertain. Swamps should always be regarded as whole hydrological systems when considering effects of management. Drainage of the proposed concession area would inevitably affect swamp further inland, and this effect is very difficult to delimit. Thus effect of forest conversion in the concession would touch a much larger area through drainage, increased access and fire risk. Part of the concession area includes or limits to conservation areas such as Wildlife Reserve of Tasik Tanjung Padang. Even if not converted, they would certainly suffer a lot from changes in the surrounding environment. Peat swamp forests are important reservoirs of biodiversity. They are less species rich and tall forests in comparison to low-land forests on mineral soils, but even so they still are among the most biodiverse ecosystems in the earth. A large number of endemic tree species are found in peat swamps, and they are also an important habitat for many endangered trees and animals restricted to low-land forests (Rieley & Page 1997). Such declining and endangered tree species are found commonly in the concession area as species of meranti (Shorea spp.), ramin (Gonystylus spp.) and jelutung (Dyera spp.). Examples of endangered animals present in the area include Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) and estuarine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus). The
fire problem Peat swamp forests in natural state do not burn easily. Anthropogenic fires, canal construction and selective logging expose swamp forests to fires by drying them up and by producing flammable vegetation (Bechteler & Siegert 2004). If drained properly and replaced by acacia plantations as planned, risk of disastrous fires would be even higher. Peat deposits can burn for years once ignited. Recovery of forest vegetation from the fires is slow and often hampered by recurrent fires. The planned plantations would fragment and drain the large peat swamp area in the coast of Riau and increase access to forests beyond the concession. Thus increased risk of forest fires affects area beyond the concession. The coastal peat swamps of Riau and the concession area are situated just opposite of heavily populated Singapore and coast of Peninsular Malaysia, which have suffered from smoke originating in Indonesian fires in recent years. Fire disaster in peatlands of Riau would have severe impacts abroad. An example of how things can go wrong when converting peat swamp areas to cultivations is the governmental mega-rice project in Borneo's south coast. The project intended to turn a 1 million hectares of peat swamp in the province of Central Kalimantan to rice fields, but failed miserably. The disastrous fires of 1997-1998 raged in the drained, logged and cleared peat swamps of the project area, and the area has been burning annually ever since. Carbon emissions of Indonesian fires came largely from this area. The area is nowadays largely barren land, and costly and time-consuming restoration activities have been initiated to avoid further disasters (Aldhous 2004). Basic
information on RAPP and APRIL The company started operations before any plantation resources were established, and was initially fully reliant on wood from natural forests. After ten years of operations, this is still the case: the company receives only about 20-30% of its raw material from its monoculture acacia plantations according to company figures. The rest is sourced from natural forests, from company's existing concessions (280 000 ha) and outside. This will remain so for years to come (until 2008 according to the company), although lack of natural forests in central Sumatra will become a sourcing problem. Several valuable low-land rainforest areas have been destroyed by APRIL such as buffer zone of Bukit Tigapuluh National Park, surroundings of the newly established Teso Nilo National Park with highest recorded number of vascular plants per study plot in world, and coastal peat swamps in Pelalawan. Such endangered animals as Sumatran tiger and Sumatran elephant have severely declined because of pulp industry's operations in Riau. There's no other pulp company in the tropics besides the other large pulp mill in Riau, Indah Kiat, that would have caused such devastation for nature. Besides forest destruction, the company has been involved in numerous land disputes around Riau, some of which have resulted in violence against locals protesting the loss of their land (e.g. in Kerinci, Lubuk Jambi). The basic problem with pulp industry in Riau is the overcapacity in relation to sustainable raw material resources. Because of this, national and local NGOs and even ministers have demanded restructuring of pulp industry, but so far in vain. On the contrary, companies are planning further increases in their capacities. More
information Sources Aldhous, P. 2004: Borneo is burning. - Nature 432: 144-146. Barr, C. 2001. Banking on sustainability: structural adjustment and forestry reform in post-Suharto Indonesia. - Washington, DC., USA, WWF Macroeconomics Program Office and CIFOR. 140 pp. Bechteler, A. & Siegert, F. 2004: Recurrent fires in tropical peatlands in central Kalimantan. - Pages 607-613 in Päivänen, J. (ed.): Wise Use of Peatlands. Proceedings of the 12th International Peat Congress. International Peat Society, Jyväskylä. 831 pp. Brady, M. A. 1997: Effects of vegetation changes on organic matter dynamics in three coastal peat deposits in Sumatra, Indonesia. - Pages 113-134 in Rieley & Page 1997. Bryant, D., Nielsen D. & Tangley L. 1997: Last frontier forests: Ecosystems and economies on the edge. - World Resources Institute, Washington DC. 42 pp. Cossalter, C. 2004: New sustainability action plan for Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper – In-house presentation, 5 March 2004, CIFOR. Diemont, W.H., Nabuurs, G.J., Rieley, J.O. & Rijksen, H.D. 1997: Climate change and management of tropical peatlands as a carbon reservoir. - Pages 363-8 in Rieley & Page 1997. Page S.E., Siegert, F., Rieley, J.O., Boehm, H.-D.V., Jaya, A. & Limin, S. 2002: The amount of carbon released from peatn and forest fires in Indonesia during 1997 - Nature 420: 61-65. Radjagukguk, B. 1997: Peat Soils of Indonesia: Location, classification and problems for Sustainability. - Pages 45-54 in Rieley & Page 1997. Rieley, J. O. & Page, S. E. (eds.) 1997: Biodiversity and sustainability of tropical peatlands. - Samara Publishing Limited, Cardigan. 370 pp. Rieley, J., Page, S., Wuest, R., Weiss, D. & Limin, S 2004: Tropical peatlands and climate change: past, present and future perspectives. - Pages 713-719 in Päivänen, J. (ed.): Wise Use of Peatlands. Proceedings of the 12th Internatinonal Peat Congress. International Peat Society, Jyväskylä. 831 pp. Stibig H-J., Beuchle, R, and Janvier, P. 2002. Forest cover map of insular Southeast Asia at 1:5 500 000. TREES Publications Series D: Nº3, EUR 20129 EN, European Commission, Luxembourg. Also available at: http://www.gvm.sai.jrc.it/Forest/ Tacconi, L. 2003: Fires in Indonesia. Causes, costs and policy implications. - CIFOR occasional paper no. 38. CIFOR, Bogor. 30 pp. Wetlands International & Canadian International Development Agency 2003: Map of area of peatland distribution and carbon content, 2002, province of Riau. Wösten, J.H.M., Ismail, A.B. & van Wijk, A.L.M 1997: Peat subsidence and its practical implications: a case study in Malaysia. - Geoderma 78: 25-36.
>>> Larger version of the same image Figure
4. Well-stocked, selectively logged peat swamp forests near Kampar River in the
proposed APRIL concession area (fig. 2). All photos by Otto Miettinen, July 2004.
>>> Larger version of the same image Figure 5. Illegal logs are transported out of forest using canals in APRIL's proposed concession area. No roads exist.
>>>
Larger version of the same image Figure 6. Logged over peat swamp forest in APRIL' s proposed concession. Meranti (Shorea spp.) trees and logs of over 50 cm in diameter (such as in the photo) were still common in the area in July 2004. |
