“If deforestation practices continue to be done, there will be an additional 15 - 32.5 million hectares of forest areas that will perish by year 2020,” said Abdul Kadir Sabaruddin in his dissertation for doctoral degree on Thursday (16/8) at Faculty of Law UGM.
Titled The Role of Government in Protecting the Function of Protected Forests of Wain River in Balikpapan City, the dissertation showed that the impacts of global warming was getting more inevitable because one of the controls, namely the forest, has reduced in size.
Kadir saw that the protected forest areas of Wain River were decreasing in size due to illegal logging, forest fires, and wild animal poaching. “These impacted the size reduction of the forest function as land erosive controls,” he said.
Enactment of decentralisation since Post-Reform has made the management of the Wain River forest areas under the control of the municipality of Balikpapan. The result, however, did not help much to the reduction of size.
Since 2014 through the new regional legislation, the management had shifted to the Provincial Government of East Kalimantan through the Forest Management Unit. In his dissertation, Kadir formulated suggestions to the regional governments on such management as well as the legal-formal power.
First, the provincial government needs to regulate the River Basins that are under its control based on Article 15 Law No. 23 Year 2014. This is because the river basin is an integral part of the protected forest. “Moreover, the function of the protected forest is much related to the spatial arrangement and management of river basins,” he said.
Furthermore, Kadir expected the Forest Management Unit for Production to protect the area of Wain River area comprehensively, including the river basins in the administrative areas of Kutai Kartanegara and Penajam Paser Utara regencies.
“This is important to do because the future of the Wain River is related to the management of the river basins,” he said,
Lastly, the Forest Management Unit also needs to pay attention to the welfare of the surrounding communities so that they can also help protect the function of the areas in the future.