Sitting in a small boat at the junction of two drainage canals, all I can see are walls of crumbling peat piled up to four metres high. On these parched banks, nothing grows. In some spots, smoke rises from the debris, while elsewhere patches of yellow, acidic sediments taint the peat. Overhead the Sun hangs orange-red, peering bleakly through a smoky shroud. It's like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Certainly 'apocalypse' is an apt description for what happened here in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan, in the south of the island of Borneo. This area was, until recently, a lush swamp forest that had lain undisturbed for thousands of years. But a single, wantonly inept decision by Indonesia's former dictator, Suharto, changed all that. Suharto wanted to turn Borneo into the rice bowl of Indonesia. But he succeeded only in creating a smouldering heap of ash that blights the lives of local people — and threatens to destabilize the global climate by belching vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
EDIT
Much of the Indonesian archipelago is blanketed in a layer of peat — forest litter too wet to rot that has accumulated over thousands of years. Over decades, these forests have been slowly cleared and drained. But matters took a sharp turn for the worse in 1995. Fertile land on the overpopulated island of Java was needed for housing and industry, so Suharto announced that more than one million hectares in Central Kalimantan — an area about a third the size of Belgium — would be switched to rice production. Over the next two years, loggers felled the forests, while contractors dug some 4,600 kilometres of drainage canals, the largest of them 30 metres wide (see Map, below). Tens of thousands of landless Javanese were brought in to tend the Mega Rice Project, as the plan was known.
The canals were laid down in a pattern that, in Java, keeps the soil well drained and irrigates crops with river water. But here in Borneo, the peatland topography rendered it useless. The peat is piled up into domed structures that rise to several metres above river level. Even a dictator's decree can't make water run uphill, so the canals simply sucked the peat dry. At the same time, the peat also proved too acidic to grow rice. Suharto had been told as much by the few local experts who were prepared to speak out. But the plan went ahead anyway — buoyed by the lure of lucrative construction contracts doled out to associates of his regime.
In the end, the Mega Rice Project yielded barely a grain. Its failure occurred against a background of economic meltdown and rioting across much of Indonesia. In Kalimantan, there was an orgy of bloodletting as the downtrodden Dayaks turned on Muslim settlers. Some returned to the gruesome headhunting practices of earlier generations, invoking the spirits of their ancestors in pre-battle rituals. The newer migrants brought in for the Mega Rice Project mostly avoided the violence. But with no economic incentive to stay, many fled Borneo. Today, Kalimantan's tensions have subsided. Suharto was forced to step down in 1998, and the Mega Rice Project was abandoned shortly afterwards. But the drainage of the swamps has left a legacy of fire that returns each year during the dry season, from July to late October. Some fires are started deliberately to clear land for cultivation; others result from carelessly tossed cigarettes. This October, street life in Palangkaraya, the capital of Central Kalimantan, is accompanied by the constant whiff of smoke. Drive outside the city's limits, and you are soon in a smoggy haze. There are few flames, but the peat can smoulder for days. At one point, a fallen tree blocks the road — the peat in which it grew has literally burned away. Standing by the roadside, my eyes are streaming."
EDIT
Much, much more - please read this important article if you have time.
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/Dynapage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v432/n7014/full/432144a_fs.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
