Tri Atmoko is an everyday customer to the mangrove forests of Balikpapan Bay on the east coast of Indonesian Borneo, the place he research proboscis monkeys, an endangered species finest recognized for its comically giant nostril.
He’d final gone there in 2022, he tells Mongabay lately. On his return this previous June, areas of mangrove bushes that have been nonetheless intact earlier than had now disappeared.
“I discovered many new developments,” says Tri, a primatologist with Indonesia’s Nationwide Analysis and Innovation Company (BRIN), a authorities physique. “I noticed quite a few logistic ports being constructed for [the transportation of] supplies like sand and rock. Mangrove areas, which have been beforehand intact, are being cleared to construct these ports.”
All that building materials is headed a couple of kilometres inland to the most important building web site in Indonesia: Nusantara, the brand new capital metropolis being carved out of the Bornean jungle. The event’s footprint contains 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of mangrove forest, a part of a 16,000-hectare (39,500-acre) mangrove belt that runs between Balikpapan Bay and the mouth of the Mahakam River.
Nusantara is the signature undertaking of President Joko Widodo, who kicked it off in 2019 with the intention of transferring the seat of presidency from the overcrowded and quickly sinking Jakarta by the point he leaves workplace in October 2024.
However the undertaking has been beset by ballooning prices (with the full tab now at an estimated US$33 billion), repeated delays, and a reluctance by overseas traders to become involved. And as Jokowi, because the president is broadly recognized, rushes to get landmarks just like the new presidential palace accomplished, the setting can also be coming below strain.
Tri says the ports being swiftly constructed alongside the mangrove coast are a part of this rush. To move the constructing materials and tools, building firms are utilizing giant barges, which injury the mangrove bushes, he says: “These barges are too massive.”
Greenpeace Indonesia additionally lately reported clearing of an space of mangroves alongside the higher reaches of Balikpapan Bay for building to make method for heavy equipment.
This poses “a big menace to biodiversity,” the NGO stated.
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Growth [of Nusantara] should proceed cautiously, contemplating the habitat situations and wildlife. Necessary areas [for biodiversity] needs to be legally protected to keep away from important modifications to the prevailing panorama.
Tri Atmoko, primatologist, Nationwide Analysis and Innovation Company
“The destruction of those mangroves, mixed with the large improve in water visitors inside the bay — a habitat for Irrawaddy dolphins, dugongs, and saltwater crocodiles — has disrupted the native ecosystem, resulting in rising conflicts between wildlife and native communities in recent times,” Greenpeace stated.
The rise in delivery visitors additionally creates noise air pollution, disturbing the native wildlife, based on Tri. When animals like proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus) get confused, it impacts their reproductive charges, he provides. His most up-to-date examine places the variety of proboscis monkeys at about 3,900 within the Balikpapan Bay space, making this a key stronghold for the endangered species.
Myrna Asnawati Safitri, the deputy for setting and pure assets on the OIKN, the federal government company overseeing the Nusantara undertaking, confirmed the findings by Tri and Greenpeace. She stated the OIKN has acted on these findings by issuing warnings to the businesses clearing the mangroves and ordering them to replant the affected areas.
The OIKN has additionally filed fees with the police in opposition to one of many firms, Myrna added.
“We preserve observing and monitoring [the mangroves] in the mean time,” she informed Mongabay.
Insufficient biodiversity planning
The Indonesian authorities had promised that the development of Nusantara, slated for completion in 2045, wouldn’t clear any protected forests, however its grasp plan for the brand new capital didn’t point out something about mangroves.
Tri attributes the clearing of the mangrove forests and disturbance of wildlife habitat insufficient biodiversity planning within the growth plan. Nevertheless, Myrna stated the OIKN had integrated Tri’s examine on proboscis monkeys into the part of its grasp plan to guard biodiversity and mitigate environmental hurt within the area.
In March 2024, the OIKN rolled out this biodiversity administration grasp plan amid mounting criticism of the environmental and social threats posed by the development of the brand new capital metropolis.
It units out quite a few motion plans to protect wildlife habitat, shield species and restore broken ecosystems by to 2029. The final word objective is to make sure 65 per cent of the realm of the brand new capital is tropical rainforest, by designating protected areas and rehabilitating degraded lands and forests.
Tri says he welcomes the grasp plan, however provides that it comes “a little bit too late”: building exercise started as early as August 2022, almost two years earlier than the grasp plan was revealed.
“Such research ought to have been completed early on, earlier than growth began,” he says. “With a lot of the land already cleared, it’s now too late for efficient planning. It ought to have been completed earlier because the baseline for planning.”
Myrna stated in February that her workplace had taken some mitigation measures to guard the Balikpapan Bay ecosystem, together with designating the mangrove ecosystem as a protected space, allocating a small island as a wildlife reserve, and conducting mangrove rehabilitation. She added that her group had reached out to native NGOs and civil society teams to contain them in monitoring and administration.
However even because the grasp plan has been rolled out and protecting measures applied, deforestation persists — as does native resistance to the clearing of the mangrove forest, Tri says. Many communities in Balikpapan Bay depend on the mangroves as a supply for wooden, honey and conventional medicines, and as breeding grounds for commercially vital fish species.
The continued clearing signifies the protecting measures aren’t being successfully applied, regardless of the federal government’s promise to make Nusantara a “inexperienced” metropolis, Tri says.
He requires extra sturdy biodiversity planning and protecting measures, particularly on condition that Nusantara’s footprint overlaps with 41 per cent of the proboscis monkeys’ habitat.
“Growth [of Nusantara] should proceed cautiously, contemplating the habitat situations and wildlife,” he says. “Necessary areas [for biodiversity] needs to be legally protected to keep away from important modifications to the prevailing panorama.”
This story was revealed with permission from Mongabay.com.
