Governor of Aceh supporting geothermal project of Turkish developer
Forests in Mount Leuser National Park, Indonesia (source: flickr/ Paul Keller, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
26 Ağu 2016
The Governor of the province of Aceh is seeking support from the national government of Indonesia on rezoning a natural park allowing a geothermal project by Turkish Hitay Holdings to go ahead.
Reported locally, the governor of Aceh province in Indonesia is moving forward with a plan to rezone part of Mount Leuser National Park for geothermal development, despite opposition from conservationists who say the project threatens key rhino and orangutan populations.
Last week, Governor Zaini Abdullah sent an official letter to the forestry minister in Jakarta asking that a section of the park’s “core zone” be changed to a “utilization zone” so that a Turkish company may develop geothermal there. The utilization zone would still be part of the park.
The company, PT Hitay Panas Energy, is an arm of Hitay Holdings, an investment group founded and chaired by Emin Hitay, one of Turkey’s richest men.
Hitay has some history in Indonesia. He served as the archipelagic country’s honorary consul in Istanbul, and chairs the Turkish-Indonesian Business Council. Hitay plans to invest billions of dollars in nine geothermal projects across Indonesia’s main western islands of Sumatra and Java.
Mount Leuser National Park is part of the wider Leuser Ecosystem, a nationally protected area constituting one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact rainforest. But the Aceh government’s 2013 spatial plan makes no mention of Leuser, and local officials have argued that the province has a right to develop the area. The proposed change would see over 18,000 hectares rezoned, according to a presentation earlier this summer, delivered to forestry ministry and local officials.
While the local government sees the project as an important support of the ambitious plan of adding 35,000 MW in power generation capacity to the country, conservationists see it as a threat to wildlife, the ecosystem of the park and an overall negative impact on people’s live and the environment.
Source: Mongabay
