By Hans Nicholas Jong
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has rolled out what it calls a “biodiversity management master plan” amid mounting criticism of the environmental and social threats posed by the construction of the country’s new capital city in the Bornean forest.
The plan, published March 26, sets out a number of action plans to preserve wildlife habitat, protect species and restore damaged ecosystems in the new capital, known as Nusantara, through to 2029.
The ultimate goal is to ensure 65% of the area of the new capital is tropical rainforest, by designating protected areas and rehabilitating degraded lands and forests.
The new city’s “protected” zone spans 177,000 hectares (437,400 acres), of which only 2% is currently undisturbed natural forest. Less than a quarter is degraded or secondary forest — a legacy of logging and fires — while the rest comprises plantation and mining concessions. With such a small patch of intact forest to start from, and such a large swath of degraded land to reforest, achieving what President Joko Widodo calls a “green forest city” will be a challenge, experts say.
From late 2022 until the end of 2023, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry reforested just 1,441 hectares (3,561 acres) of the Nusantara site, a miniscule fraction of the government target of reforesting 120,000 hectares (296,500 acres) until 2045.
The reforestation efforts have been stumped by haphazard planting, with nonnative tree species being planted, coupled with poor planting practices and monitoring, experts found.
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo plants in the site of the new capital, Nusantara, in Penajam Paser Utara district, East Kalimantan, in December 2023. Image courtesy of the Presidential Secretariat office/Muchlis Jr.
For the reforestation program to succeed, it’s important for the government to pay attention to all aspects of the environment, including the soil conditions and the climate, according to Willie Smits, founder of the nonprofit Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation and a member of an independent committee of nine experts monitoring the environmental and social aspects of the Nusantara project.
Understanding these will allow the government to determine the right tree species to plant so they can grow to form a tropical rainforest, rather than a monoculture tree plantation, Smits said. To date, however, the seed selection has been haphazard.
“To bring back the wildlife, it’s important to choose the right [tree] species as well. Right now, they are collecting lots of seeds, but randomly,” Smits said.
But despite the hurdles, he said, it’s possible to return the landscape back into rainforest. He cited the case of Samboja Lestari, the BOSF’s orangutan rescue and rehabilitation center that doubles as a tropical rainforest reforestation project in Samboja, a neighboring subdistrict to Nusantara.
The 1,854-hectare (4,581-acre) Samboja Lestari site used to be deforested land covered in the highly fire-prone cogon grass and devoid of trees and wildlife. The BOSF led a campaign to plant nearly 1,000 tree species to reforest the land, resulting in the growth of secondary forest and the return of 163 species of birds and other wildlife, Smits said.
“So we can learn from existing experience in the new capital site itself,” he said.
A vehicle passes the industrial forest concession of PT Itci Hutani Manunggal (IHM) in Penajam Paser Utama district, East Kalimantan. Parts of PT IHM’s pulpwood concession overlaps with the site of the new capital city. Image courtesy of Trend Asia/Melvinas Priananda.
Monitoring and education
As part of the new master plan, the government agency overseeing the development of Nusantara, known as the OIKN, has identified seven areas across the site and surroundings that have high biodiversity, and thus high conservation value. It says it has also cataloged 3,889 species of wildlife, including 454 bird, 206 reptile and 168 mammal species, occurring within a 50-kilometer (30-mile) radius of Nusantara.
These include Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), sun bears (Helarctos malayanus), proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus), Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris), and various species of hornbills.
Seven areas with High Conservation Values (HCV) identified by the OIKN in Nusantara, Indonesia’s new capital.
To ensure the survival of these species, the OIKN says it will engage experts, map critical ecosystems and species, prevent land clearing or logging during breeding seasons, translocate plants and animals, and monitor its programs and their progress.
“We will routinely monitor [ecosystems and habitats] both using satellites as well as on-the-ground verification,” said Pungky Widiaryanto, the director of forest use and water resource development at the OIKN.
The agency will also involve local and Indigenous communities in monitoring the landscape and conservation efforts, according to Myrna Asnawati Safitri, the OIKN’s deputy for the environment and natural resources.
“We will build knowledge about forest and forest management in Nusantara by collecting knowledge from many sources, including traditional knowledge. And we, as a government entity, will facilitate this sharing of knowledge,” she said.
Education is a critical component of the biodiversity protection programs being planned, according to the master plan, as the new capital is expected to eventually see the influx of up to 2 million inhabitants by 2045.
These people will have to live side by side with the wildlife in the various high conservation value areas, so it’s important for the government to educate and change the mindset of people who will live in Nusantara, Myrna said. This will help prevent incidents of human-wildlife conflict, she added.
“How to make people in Nusantara have a mindset that’s willing to share living space with other species? This is a new thing for Indonesia, so we are preparing campaign and education [for future citizens of Nusantara],” Myrna said.
A Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) hangs from the trees. Fewer than 100,000 orangutans remain on Borneo. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Avoid, minimize, restore
The master plan outlines a four-point hierarchy to mitigate the impacts of the ongoing Nusantara construction on the environment. The first point is avoidance, in which developers must take measures to avoid creating impacts from the outset by avoiding building infrastructure inside or near critical habitats or key species’ breeding grounds.
The main instance of avoidance in the project so far is the scrapping of the initial plan to build the new capital next to the bay in Balikpapan, a busy port city in East Kalimantan province. But because there are mangrove forests and high biodiversity in the Balikpapan Bay area, the Nusantara project was eventually moved farther inland, Pungky said.
The second mitigation point, in case avoidance isn’t feasible, is minimization to reduce the duration, intensity and extent of impacts that are unavoidable. Examples include measures to reduce noise and pollution, designing power lines to reduce the likelihood of bird electrocutions, and building wildlife road crossings.
Pungky cited the case of the toll road being built to connect Nusantara to Balikpapan, which should halve the travel time from the current to current 2 hours. The project initially called for running the road along a direct route that would cut through a region called Sepaku, he said. But an assessment showed this would have a high environmental impact.
As a result, the OIKN has rerouted the planned road to bypass Sepaku. However, the new route cuts through the forested buffer zone of the Sungai Wain protection forest, which is home to old-growth dipterocarp rainforest and some of the world’s most threatened wildlife, including sun bears, a vulnerable species that’s the Balikpapan mascot, and orangutans.
Activists have warned that the road will cut off natural wildlife corridors, fragmenting their habitat. An incident last year in which an orangutan was seen crossing the site of the road construction indicates the project is already impacting wildlife, they say.
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