http://www.smh.com.au/world/former-aceh-chief-denies-orangutans-died-in-burn-20120405-1wff4.html
Former Aceh chief denies orang-utans died in burn Michael Bachelard, Banda Aceh April 6, 2012 orangutan THE man who signed the permit allowing 1600 hectares of carbon-rich peat forest and orang-utan habitat to be razed and turned into a palm oil plantation agrees his decision was ''morally wrong''. However, Irwandi Yusuf, the former governor of Aceh who is seeking a second term in Monday's election, said he had done it as a wake-up call to the international community over its failing climate change policies. Dr Irwandi, who himself once worked in a project to conserve elephants, signed a pledge soon after becoming governor in 2007 to protect all his province's primary forests, which lock away billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. He was also active in international climate negotiations arguing that Acehnese forests could be saved if international companies were prepared to pay to protect them - so-called REDD+ schemes. But in Banda Aceh this week, Dr Irwandi announced his disillusionment with the REDD+ schemes and threatened to allow more burning if nothing changed. ''The international community think our forest is a free toilet for their carbon,'' he said. ''Every day they are saying they want clean air and to protect forests … but they want to inhale our clean air without paying anything. ''That concession, 1600 hectares, was like a pinch to the international community. Maybe I will make a threat to lift the moratorium [entirely] to make them look at Aceh.'' Dr Irwandi said thousands had lost their jobs when he had declared the moratorium. ''I wanted some funds to create a livelihood for people who lost their job. The money did not come,'' he said. ''REDD or blue I don't care: where is the international attention on that?'' He said he ''hated'' the palm oil company, PT Kallista Alam, to which he granted the permit to create a plantation in the Tripa swamps south of the capital. He had delayed their application in his office for 12 months but his bureaucrats told him he should issue it. ''I feel very sorry for that. It was not wrong legally but wrong morally,'' he said. Dr Irwandi also denied claims by conservationists that 100 or more critically endangered orang-utans died when the patch of forest was cleared, saying his inspectors viewed the forest and found ''no single orang-utan was there''. But the director of conservation at the Sumatran Orang-utan Conservation program, Dr Ian Singleton, said he could ''take Dr Irwandi into that Kallista Alam concession and find 10 orang-utan nests within 20 minutes''. There were at least 100 and anywhere up to 300 of the apes living in the concession that was destroyed, he said. Graham Usher, a landscape protection specialist based in Sumatra, said he sympathised with frustration at the performance of REDD schemes but ''it does seem a bit like setting your own house on fire to draw attention to the shortcomings of the fire department''. Ads by Google Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/former-aceh-chief-denies-orangutans-died-in-burn-20120405-1wff4.html#ixzz1rH55Bw00 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: prole...@egroups.com Subscribe : proletar-subscr...@egroups.com Unsubscribe : proletar-unsubscr...@egroups.com List owner : proletar-ow...@egroups.com Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: proletar-dig...@yahoogroups.com proletar-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: proletar-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
