By Ryan Dagur
Capuchin friars in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province want the government to stop activities that threaten the ecosystem of the world’s largest volcanic lake and protect the rights of tribal people.
Capuchin’s Commission for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation of Medan Province is supporting the local people’s struggle to save Lake Toba from the alleged over-exploitation of its buffer zone area by Indonesia’s biggest wood pulp producer, PT Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL).
“The phenomena of floods, landslides and increasingly widespread agrarian conflicts are direct impacts of exploitative activities that ignore the balance of nature,” the Capuchin commission’s chairman, Father Hilarius Kemit, said in a Jun 3 statement.
The statement comes as the indigenous Tano Batak community and others have intensified their protests, asking the government to suspend the licenses granted to the pulp company in 1983, which allowed it access to 184,486 hectares of land near the lake.
Excessive land use and the felling of trees and vegetation around the lake have led to a decline in water levels. Pollution and excessive human activity in the region also negatively impact the area’s biodiversity and the lake, environmentalists say.
However, local people and activists say the company’s agents try to crush the protest through intimidation of the leaders.
The latest example was a gift packet that environmental activist Delima Silalahi received on May 30. The packet contained a dead but bleeding bird, interpreted as a veiled threat against her life.
Silalahi, who won the Goldman Environmental Prize 2023, received the packet after she led a protest on May 26 with hundreds of people from the Tano Batak Indigenous Community before the North Sumatra province parliament office, demanding the closure of the pulp-making company.
Capuchin Kemit said that they support the local people’s call to the company to stop all its activities “after seeing the impact of the destruction of biodiversity in the area.”
He said the tribal people have preserved nature for generations, and the government should stop intimidating them through criminal cases in the name of protecting the environment.
“Indigenous peoples and local communities are not obstacles to development, but rather guardians of ecological values and local wisdom that have been passed down for centuries,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, the pulp company’s communication head, Salomo Sihotang, said they are “open to dialogue and accepting views” of all parties who want to create “a fair and responsible sustainability” in the Tano Batak area.
He asserted that a government audit conducted for 2022-2023 found no social or environmental violations by the company.
Lake Toba, the site of a super-volcanic eruption that occurred about 75,000 years ago, was designated by the government as an international destination.
Measuring 100 kilometres in length and 30 kilometres wide, it is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world. – UCA News
