Alternative routes for a major Indonesian mining road to reduce environmental and financial costs
Written By Jayden Engert,
PhD Candidate, Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, James Cook University
15th November 2021
The coal road doesn’t have to go through the forest
The Indonesian coal-mining corporation PT Marga Bara Jaya has gained approval to construct an 88 km-long road through the Harapan Rainforest in Sumatra, against protests from numerous environmental and civil groups in Indonesia. The Harapan Rainforest (or Hutan Harapan) is an important area of critically endangered Sumatran lowland rainforest, and a habitat refuge for numerous threatened and endangered species. As Sumatra has lost almost all of its lowland rainforest, including much of the forest area surrounding the Harapan Rainforest, it is indefensible to construct a road through the little forest that remains.
Figure 1. Initial land clearing for the PT MBJ coal transport road. Photo by Erwan Hermawan/TEMPO. Sumatra, Indonesia, 19 June 2020.
Identifying alternative routes for a potentially destructive road
To identify alternative routes for the proposed mining road, we used least-cost path analysis, which employs a user-designed cost surface to generate transport routes that minimize the cumulative cost of movement between locations. This analysis is often used in linear-infrastructure ecology to identify locations for road crossing structures and for identifying where to build linear infrastructure to minimise impacts.
Figure 2. Mining-road routes for both the three initial proposed routes (the ‘Outside’, ‘Edge’ and ‘Through’ roads) and our five potential alternative routes generated using least cost-path analysis (‘A’ to ‘E’). Roads “A” and “B” (displayed using a heavier line) are considered the best potential routes from environmental and construction-cost perspectives.
To quantify the improved environmental outcomes from the alternative routes we propose, we developed a measure to estimate future forest loss following road construction. Using a modified travel-time metric, we identified a clear relationship between road access and forest loss. Areas closer to roads generally experienced much greater forest loss than those further from roads.
With our travel-time metric, we estimated that the proposed road routes near Harapan would lead to between 3,000 ha and 4,300 ha of forest loss, with much of this occurring with the Harapan Rainforest itself. Our alternate routes, however, would cause only 1,500 to 2,500 ha of forest loss in the general vicinity, and only 100 ha of forest loss within the Harapan Rainforest itself.
Sparing nature and saving money
The alternate routes we propose for the Harapan Rainforest are unusual in not only reducing environmental costs, but also leading to substantial economic savings as a result of lower road-construction costs. This was achieved by taking a more direct path for the road route, following existing roads where possible, and limiting expensive earthworks and bridges associated with steeper terrain.
Strategic-planning methods can improve road projects
Many thousands of new road projects are being planned or constructed across the globe as part of national and multi-national development plans and spontaneous development activities. Large-scale road projects in South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific region and beyond will cut through thousands of protected areas and other important sites for biodiversity.
The placement of such road projects could optimistically be described as ‘inopportune’, and in many cases ‘disastrous’, for nature, people, economies, or all three. Strategic-planning methods, such as those used here, can reduce the environmental toll of new road projects by avoiding critical ecosystems and wildlife habitats. Additionally, strategic planning can improve socioeconomic outcomes for rural residents and indigenous peoples, by ensuring that new roads improve their access to markets, education, and healthcare at the lowest cost. With millions of kilometres of new roads being built across the tropics each year, the need for proactive road-planning cannot be overstated.
Figure 3. Wood products from land clearing in and around the APRIL plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. Photo by William Laurance.
Author information:
Jayden Engert, PhD Candidate, Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia
Email: jayden.engert@my.jcu.edu.au
William F. Laurance, Distinguished Professor, Director, Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia
Email: bill.laurance@jcu.edu.au
Source:
Jayden E. Engert, F. Yoko Ishida & William F. Laurance, 2021. Rerouting a major Indonesian mining road to spare nature and reduce development costs. Conservation Science and Practice, e521. DOI: 10.1111/csp2.521. https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.521.
Editor:
Yun Wang and Rodney van der Ree
Cite this summary:
Engert, J & Laurance, W. (2021). Alternative routes for a major Indonesian mining road to reduce environmental and financial costs. Edited by Wang, Y & van der Ree, R. TransportEcology.info, Accessed at: https://transportecology.info/research/alternative-routes-for-indonesia-mining-road [Date accessed].
