By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The Indonesian government has unveiled the country’s first national priority plan to recover the ecosystems of 15 major lakes in “critical” condition by 2024.
“Saving these national priority lakes is an effort to control damage, maintain, restore, and recover the conditions and functions of lake water bodies, water catchment areas, and lake borders so that they are beneficial for the welfare of the communities in a sustainable way,” says the decree signed by President Joko Widodo on June 22.
The government says the lakes have long been experienced ecological degradation, chiefly sedimentation, which has resulted in their rapid shrinking and a decline in the biodiversity they host.
This in turn has had environmental, economic and sociocultural repercussions. A presidentially appointed task force has also been formed to carry out the plan to save the lakes, and is headed by Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment.
The idea of rescuing Indonesia’s deteriorating lakes has been around since the 1970s, but the first meaningful steps were made in 2017. That’s when government officials and academics from across the country gathered in Gorontalo, North Sulawesi province, to declare that a national body should be formed to direct attention and funding to the nation’s more than 800 lakes.
The planning ministry in 2019 announced 15 lakes were in “critical” condition as a result of environmental degradation, often caused by human activities, such as pollution, logging and destructive fishing practices. Recurring massive fish die-offs are commonly reported events in some of the lakes.
Some observers have praised the new policy to rescue the lakes, saying that the strategies laid out in the decree appear to address the problems that the lakes face.
But they also warn that lake recovery efforts should also consider the impacts to local communities. These lakes are crucial in supporting the livelihoods of millions of Indonesians, serving as a source of freshwater, a form of flood control, and a site for fish farming and tourism.
Source: Mongabay
