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Indonesia is pressing ahead with construction of a new network of dams in Borneo to power a major “green” industrial estate that will relocate Indigenous communities and cut into one of Asia’s largest stretches of intact rainforest.
“Finding fish and animals has already become difficult,” Yusmarang, a member of North Kalimantan’s Punan Indigenous community, told Mongabay Indonesia.
Last year, Mongabay reported from Malinau district, near Indonesia’s border with Malaysia, on efforts by PT Malinau Hijau Lestari to deforest thousands of hectares to grow biomass for coal-fired power plants.
Indonesia’s central government is also forging ahead with plans to construct five dams along three rivers in North Kalimantan province as part of Southeast Asia’s largest hydroelectric project. The cost of the cascade is estimated at more than US$20 billion.
Then-president Joko Widodo attended a ceremony in 2023 to mark the beginning of the Mentarang Induk Dam. Another dam planned in Bulungan district on the Kayan River will flood two villages, Long Leju and Long Peleban.
On completion of the final stage, which is scheduled for 2035, the five combined units could yield a generation capacity of 9,000 megawatts.
This cascade of dams through the old-growth forests of northern Borneo will power a vast new industrial estate that authorities in Jakarta consider of strategic importance for Indonesia. The government says it hopes the Kalimantan Industrial Park Indonesia (KIPI) estate will be the largest “green industrial area” in the world.
“The industrial park, which covers an area of 13,000 hectares [32,000 acres], will be prepared for the development of the first EV battery, petrochemicals and aluminium industries,” Joko Widodo said on a visit to Bulungan district in 2023.
“We hope they will be supported by green energy, renewable energy and hydropower from the Mentarang River and the Kayan River in the province,” he added.
Local people said tunnelling work for the first dam had reached more than 1 kilometre (0.6 miles) in length, while authorities in North Kalimantan province plan to resettle 541 families imminently.
The communities affected are in the villages of Long Berang, Long Simau, Long Sulit, Semamu Lama, Semamu Baru and Temalang in Mentarang Tubu subdistrict. Kuala Rian and Rian Tubu villages in Sungai Tubu subdistrict are also subject to relocation orders.
One cluster of 28 families has been relocated downstream at the mouth of the dam site. Yusmarang was among the people forced to vacate land his people had called home for generations.
‘Heart of Borneo’
Borneo is the world’s third-largest island, after Greenland and New Guinea, and is divided between the countries of Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The population of Indonesian Borneo was recorded as 16.2 million in Indonesia’s 2020 census. North Kalimantan, which was created as a province in 2012, accounted for just 4.2 per cent of the population among the five Indonesian provinces on Borneo.
The 701,814 population of North Kalimantan province increased by a third in the decade between 2010 and 2020, statistics agency data showed, as new economic opportunities attracted workers from elsewhere. ‘North Kalimantan Governor Zainal Arifin Paliwang has asked investors to construct more palm oil mills in the province. Last year, Zainal, a retired police general and member of President Prabowo Subianto’s political party, laid out early plans to develop a cooking oil industry in the province.
North Kalimantan accounted for 39,467 hectares (97,525 acres) of oil palm plantation concessions in 2023, the governor said, which is just over half a per cent of the land area of the province. The provincial government has also submitted a draft zoning plan that could see tens of thousands of hectares of forests converted to industrial land.
“This vision is the shared hope of all stakeholders, government, private sector and community,” the draft published in 2023 stated.
North Kalimantan is home to Kayan Mentarang National Park, which is the largest tract of unbroken rainforest in Borneo. The reserve spans 1.36 million hectares (3.36 million acres), an area larger than the U.S. state of Delaware, or more than 18 times larger than Singapore.
Most of North Kalimantan’s population is from the Kenyah, Lundayeh, Punan and Tidung Indigenous communities. Over recent decades, Indigenous governance over Kayan Mentaranag has strengthened, led by institutions like the Kayan Mentarang Indigenous Peoples Consultative Forum (FoMMA), a council of elected Indigenous leaders working alongside local government.
However, at a meeting on forestry policy in Malinau district last year, FoMMA chair Dolvina Damus said Indigenous societies lacked information about the “national priority projects” spearheaded by Indonesia’s central government.
Off the reservation
In 2007, the governments of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia signed the Heart of Borneo initiative, a pledge to conserve nature in an island home to some of the world’s most extensive biodiversity.
However, nearly 244 hectares (603 acres) of Kayan Mentarang National Park is included in plans to flood the landscape for the hydropower project, or nearly 2 per cent of the park’s area. The park straddles the two districts of Malinau and Nunukan, which border the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.
Kayan Mentarang is home to 500 known types of orchids, as well as hundreds of bird and mammal species.
National park official Mahfuad said two villages, Rian Tubu and Long Titi, were already affected by the hydropower project.
Indonesia has planned more than 100 hydroelectric dams nationwide, which are accounted as clean energy under the government’s international greenhouse gas reduction commitments. But opponents say dams can be responsible for forcible displacement and deforestation of high-conservation-value forests.
On March 14, to mark the 28th International Day of Action Against Dams, a coalition of communities impacted by dam construction, including those on North Kalimantan’s Mentarang River, published a statement characterising dams as “engines of violence, displacement, and destruction.”
A subsidiary of PowerChina is constructing a controversial dam in the Batang Toru forest in northern Sumatra, in the only habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis).
“These projects are fraudulently marketed as green energy, even as they ravage rivers, forests, and indigenous communities,” the letters reads.
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
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