THE ABILITY of AusAID to deliver government
programs must be called into question following the revelation that the aid
agency has failed in its major program to reforest Kalimantan peat swamp land.
The agency issued no media statement admitting its failure
but the ABC reported early this month that the $100 million scheme designed to
cut carbon emissions and reduce the periodic smoky fires that plague South-East
Asia, had come to an end.
In response to questions from Fairfax Media AusAID initially
pointed to its website, where an announcement claimed that the key programs of
the project had ended as planned, on June 30.
The Australian Government is spending more than $30 million
to rehabilitate the forests of central Kalimantan.
In reality, the key objectives were not delivered at all and
the failure raises serious questions about AusAID's capabilities and the value
of Indonesian aid projects - projects prime ministers so dearly love to launch
on overseas trips, but later ignore as they fail to match their grandiose
statements.
After the Boxing Day tsunami hit Aceh in 2004, then prime
minister John Howard announced Australia would provide multibillion-dollar aid
to Indonesia. More than $2 billion has been delivered.
Part of this was earmarked for climate change programs, with
then foreign minister Alexander Downer and then environment minister Malcolm
Turnbull, announcing on September 9, 2007, that: ''Greenhouse gas emissions
will be cut by around 700 million tonnes over 30 years under a $100 million
agreement signed today between the governments of Australia and Indonesia.''
Over four years the partnership aimed to preserve 70,000
hectares of peat land forests in Kalimantan, re-flood 200,000 hectares of dried
peat land and plant up to 100 million trees on rehabilitated land.
Last week, AusAID said 2.6 million seedlings raised during
the project had been planted and 17 small hand-dug canals had been blocked. No
large canals were blocked. Of the $47 million allocated for the project, $38
million had been spent by the end of June this year.
However, Patrick Anderson, from the NGO Forest People's
Programme, said a regular visitor to the site, who had just returned from a
visit, said up to 80 per cent of the seedlings planted on some sites last year
had died.
Mr Anderson said he was not surprised by AusAID's decision
to pull out of the project. There wasn't broad support for it and it was
failing. A lot of funds had been spent for very little progress.
''I know also at the district government and provincial
government level there have been lots of questions about the project,'' he
said.
As Indonesian peat swamp fires continue to blanket Singapore
and Malaysia, we regrettably still have to endorse Mr Downer's 2007 press
statement that deforestation and the burning of Indonesia's vast peat lands is
the largest single source of that country's greenhouse gas emissions.
The failure of the project cannot be sheeted home to the
Howard administration which initiated it. In June 2008, the now-resurrected
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, re-endorsed it in a partnership agreement.
Despite support from the highest levels, the bureaucrats
running the program have not managed to deliver its key objectives. They have
had plenty of warning signs of problems but have dissembled when questioned
about progress.
In May 2010 AusAID said work to begin blocking drainage
canals to raise the water table and re-wet the peat was expected to commence
''later that year''. But in November 2011, more than four years from the launch
of the program, AusAID was still only promising that work on canal blocking
would ''soon start''.
In response to questions in April last year, AusAID said
more than 50,000 seedlings had been planted and a further 1.4 million would be
planted during the year. Trialling of canal blocking methodology was under way
and six small canals had been blocked. The latest admission that no major canal
has been blocked means that the water table has not been raised, as originally
promised.
In response to questions from Greens senator Lee Rhiannon at
an estimates committee hearing on June 6, AusAID East Asia first assistant director
Rod Brazier sought to re-characterise the project. He said it was a ''pilot''
program aimed at testing some very innovative approaches to climate change
mitigation and adaptation.
But there was no suggestion that it was a ''pilot'' in the
original Downer-Turnbull media statement. Far from it. They said the project
itself would cut greenhouse gas emissions and was Australia's ''largest
greenhouse abatement project to flow so far from the Australian government's
Global Initiative on Forests and Climate''.
Explaining the current situation, Mr Brazier said that since
the original announcement, the international environment, in agreements among
countries, had ''changed somewhat'' and the circumstances in Indonesia had
''changed somewhat''. He acknowledged that the project had not met its
objective to protect 70,000 hectares of peat forest, re-flood 200,000 hectares
of dried peat lands and plant many trees.
But in replies Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud of, he
said they were pleased about some results.
Given AusAID's past performance and answers to questions,
one has to be sceptical about its current claims.
The project's failure is most regrettable because it had
commendable objectives. The land was degraded as a result of a failed Suharto
government mega rice project which aimed to turn swampy peat forest into paddy
fields. The drained land proved unsuitable and the dry peat fuelled underground
fires. The rehabilitation plan aimed to raise the water table, re-wetting the
peat and inhibiting the spread of fire.
In highly degraded areas, re-planting was expected to raise
soil moisture levels and humidity and further reduce the fire risk. The local
people were also to be shown new farming techniques that did not require the
use of fire in peat lands and did not depend on illegal logging.
Hopefully other countries involved in such projects will be
more successful than Australia.
No comments:
Post a Comment