Outgoing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Green Legacy Stands or Falls on Protection of the Leuser Ecosystem, NGOs say
[Jakarta,] In the final weeks of his presidency, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has come under massive international pressure to act to protect one of the world’s most biodiverse forests.
On the eve of the UN Climate Summit in New York, thousands of tweets flooded the President’s personal twitter account, @SBYudhoyono, asking him to protect the Leuser Ecosystem, as recent studies found Indonesia to have overtaken Brazil in having the highest rate of deforestation in the world. Located at the country’s most western tip, the fate of the Leuser Ecosystem rests entirely on the cancellation of an illegal spatial plan drawn up by the government of Aceh province.
“The Aceh Spatial Plan is invalid and illegal,” said Effendi Isma, spokesperson of Aceh Forest Care Coalition. “The plan is clearly at odds with National Spatial Planning Law and the President’s own moratorium on new plantations. It even goes as far as violating Aceh’s own 2006 Law on Aceh Governance, which is causing much distress for all those in Indonesia and abroad who supported the Helsinki Peace process.”
