FOREIGN CAPITAL NOW CONTROLS MOST OF C KALIMANTAN'S LAND TERRITORY

Palangkaraya, Apr 20 (ANTARA) - About 80 percent of Central Kalimantan's land territory is now believed to be controlled by foreign investors leaving only 20 percent open to conservation efforts, an environmental activist here said.

"Most of the land in Central Kalimantan has now been leased to foreign investment that generates no benefit for the local people. In fact, the people are increasingly being deprived of land and thus forced eventually to become landless peasants," said Ari Rompas, a spokesman of the Central Kalimantan People Defenders Front (Front Pembela Rakyat Kalteng or FPR), here Monday.

The front is a coalition of a number of organizations concerned about the environment and social welfare such as Save Our Borneo, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Mitra Lingkungan Hidup, SHK Working Group, Betang Borneo Foundation, Green Student Movement, Indonesia Green Association and other environemntal groups.

Also affiliated to the front are a number of farmers and Dayak community organizations.

Ari Rompas who is also executive director of Walhi's Central Kalimantan branch said the people of Central Kalimantan were also threatened by absolute poverty because most of them earned their living from agriculture.

To substantiate its claim that most of Central Kalimantan's land territory was now under investors' control, the FPR had collected data on the numbers of operational licenses, investment permits or concessions issued by the government up to 2008.

In 2008, the number of licenses to open oil palm plantations had reached 323 covering a total of 4.05 million hectares of land with most of the licenses given to foreign companies.

The number of forest concessions was 759 covering a total of 4.9 million hectares, in addition to 563 mining operation permits on a total area of 3.31 million hectares.

The land areas now used by foreign investors for their various economic activities added up to 80 percent of the total width of Central Kalimantan's land territory at 15.356 million hectares, Rompas said.

"The investment doing the greatest harm to the environment in Central Kalimantan is that in mining because they run open pit mines," he said.

The FPR admitted the foreign companies were also implementing conservation programs but these efforts had brushed aside environmental preservation efforts based on local wisdoms and expelled people from land they had lived on for generations.

Therefore, Rompas said, the FPR was calling on all elements of the community "to take part in ectivities to resist all forms of exploitation and oppression, including the exploitation of Central Kalimantan's natural resources."