Preserving the 'Green Triangle'

By Ahmad Maryudi
The Brunei Times (Sunday, July 12 2009)

THE Golden Triangle is often referred to the "notorious" border zone between Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. The area was once the world's most prolific supplier of opium. However, the world has now found a new "Golden Triangle", which is hailed to be very essential for the survival of human beings and the planet. It is transboundary highlands of Borneo, which covering not less than 20 million hectares across Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia — often referred to as the Heart of Borneo. HoB is one of the only three grand blocks of rainforest remaining on Earth, apart from those of the Amazon and Congo.

According to WWF, the area offers a variety of landscapes, not only tropical rain forests, but also mangroves, peat swamps and freshwater swamp forests, lowland dipterocarp forests, ironwood forests, heath forests and montane forests. It contains a golden global treasure, the mega-biodiversity with abundance of endemic species, flora and fauna. Also worth to mention, the Heart of Borneo is home of some millions indigenous people, most notable Dayak.

However, the forest tracts are severely threatened by various (notably commercial) activities. For decades, forests have been under pressure of rampant logging. Between 1985-2000, more timber were hauled from Borneo (particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia) than a sum from Amazon and Africa. These days, logging activities move further into the most remote areas. The forest integrity is further fragmented with the constructions of roads and skid trails.

In recent years, forest conversions into "economically attractive" plantations, most notably palm oil, have exponentially expanded. Oil palm plantations in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Heart of Borneo, grew by approximately 10 per cent to nearly a million hectares between 2002 and 2003 and plans for further expansions of some million hectares have been approved.

Due to its importance, the border zone forest needs holistic management approaches before it is further depleted. The most important is common and coherent policy platforms of the three nations. The plan is not as simple as it sounds. The three countries have developed such approaches by signing an MOU on forest conservation, but it needs to be translated into more practical and executable actions. The "umbrella policy" to conserve the forest resources must consists of two-tier approaches; harmonisation between sectors in the respective countries and the creation of coherent trilateral policy.

The first approach proves to be a huge challenge, indeed. Intersectoral policy has rarely been successfully created. Different sectors such as forestry, industry, energy, and agriculture, promote their own objectives, which often contradict each other. Environmental goals in forest managements are still overshadowed by concerns for economic development. Sectoral policies which encourage massive expansion of palm oil plantations, clearly pose real threat to the conservation of the forests. At both Malaysian and Indonesian parts, legal and illegal logging are still rampant. Even for legal logging, it is still beyond the capacity of the forests to regenerate themselves. The decentralisation policy in Indonesia also appears to complicate the efforts toward the more coherent and intersectoral policy. Both provincial and district governments create and promote different policies from central government.

The second approach is no less-strenuous either. Forest conservation and management strategies vary greatly amongst the respective countries. The policy of one of these countries might even put pressure to the others. The simple example is the alleged transboundary timber smugglings, across Indonesian and Malaysian borders.

To create a coherent policy platform, the countries should work together more actively. They should promote more collaborative programmes on conservation and sustainable forest management. This should be supported by strong foundations such as effective information-sharing mechanisms. This is so far the weak point of the current trilateral collaboration.