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…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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