Indonesia risks repeating an environmental disaster

AS THE PRESIDENT’S helicopter flew above the swamp forests of Central Kalimantan, a province in the Indonesian part of Borneo, older residents may have felt a sense of déjà vu. Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, had arrived on July 9th to inspect the site of a new agricultural zone of 1,650 square kilometres—more than twice the size of New York City. Twenty-three years earlier, President Suharto, the strongman who ruled from 1966 to 1998, travelled by chopper to the same area to admire the 10,000 square kilometres of peat forest being converted into rice paddies. Like Jokowi, he worried about being able to feed his people, so set about turning Central Kalimantan into Indonesia’s “granary”. 

The Mega-Rice Project (MRP) was a mega-failure. It produced hardly any rice; the peaty soil, it turns out, lacks the requisite minerals. Instead of spurring farming, the draining of the waterlogged forest with a 6,000km network of canals fuelled fire. A few months after Suharto’s visit, the dried peat burst into flames. It was the biggest environmental disaster in Indonesia’s history. A study published in 2002 found that burning peat in 1997 on Kalimantan and the nearby island of Sumatra generated the equivalent of 13-40% of the average annual global emissions from fossil fuels. The MRP was abandoned in 1999 but its legacy endures in the...

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