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The UNDP Indonesia and the Government of Indonesia collaborate to run a project entitled “Strengthening Forest Area Planning and Management in Kalimantan (Kalfor)”. The project is focused on the Kalimantan island. The island has to suffer from habitat loss, habitat degradation, overexploitation of biological resources and pollution. This is due to high demand on land or area for agricultural activities. Forest land conversion for palm oil production is blamed to be the highest portion in the process of forest land conversion. It is estimated that the conversion may exceed 9 million hectares, accounting for 26% of deforestation between 2005 and 2010. In the last 10 years, the average deforestation rate associated with palm oil production has been 300,000 ha/year. Expansion potential of oil palm plantation is estimated to be 24.5 million hectares of which 10.3 million hectares will be in Kalimantan up from the current planted area of 3.164 million hectares.
Researchers calculated that 47% of oil palm plantation development from 1990 to 2010 in Kalimantan was at the expense of intact forests, 22% at secondary or logged forests, and 21% at agro-forests, a mix of agricultural land and forests. Only 10% of expansion occurred in non-forested areas. It is estimated that by 2020, under current development scenarion, it would convert 9,384,400 hectare of Kalimantan’s forest of which approximately 90% is forested lands with 41% intact forests, leading to massive carbon emissions.
Palm oil land areas have very low biodiversity values and their expansion causes near total loss of habitat value and habitat fragmentation and degradation, heavily impacting on biodiversity and ecosystem services on the island. Furthermore, oil palm monoculture contains lower biodiversity value due to the absence of the major components of forest vegetation, including forest trees, lianas and epiphytic orchids. Palm oil plantations were also reported to have caused water supply problems at downstream as a result of water use and fertilizer and pesticide application. These threats pose not only a negative impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services, but also have a significant economic cost to the provinces and the nation, from loss of natural capital. These are considered underlying causes include population growth, poverty, unclear land titles and tenure rights and weak natural resource governance.
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n order to safeguard Kalimantan’s globally significant biodiversity, it is critical for Indonesia to pursue a green economic growth path. Indonesia needs to define, plan for and create a better balance between the development and management of major estate crops such as rubber, coffee, and oil palm, and the need for improved forest protection. Improvement in palm oil siting and forest landscape planning and management in Kalimantan is one of the most important components for achieving the green development vision. To implement this issue, UNDP is working closely with he Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) to run the Kalfor project.
The Kalfor project is designed to develop and implement various approaches to enhance protection of forested areas in non-national state forest land (APL), as well as lands within the convertible forest (HPK) category, both of which are subject to potential conversion (administratively and/or physically) to estate crops and other land uses. The project thus focuses on creating more effective land allocations and management of forest areas with high biodiversity and ecosystem services in the context of potential estate crop development in Kalimantan and particularly in the Heart of Borneo (HoB) area. Competing priorities between the country’s targeted increase in palm oil production and associated growth and employment targets for the sector need to be reconciled with commitments at both national and international levels to reducing rates of deforestation, forest fires and associated GHG emissions and biodiversity loss.
The project intervention will be focused on three pilot provinces: West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and East Kalimantan. The project aims to strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) and other key government institutions such as the National Planning Authority (Bappenas), the National Land Board (BPN) and Province/district governments as well as relevant sub-national government institutions to protect areas with retained forest cover from conversion to other landuses including estate crops. The project is structured into four components, with each component comprising a complementary suite of two to three outputs:
i)Component 1: Mainstreaming of forest ecosystem service and biodiversity considerations into national, provincial, and district policies and decision-making processes for forest area planning and management;
ii)Component 2: Strengthened and expanded implementation of best practises in the estate crops sector in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in four target landscapes in Kalimantan;
iii)Component 3: Creation of incentives system to safeguard forests, including biodiversity and ecosystem services, from estate crop sector;
iv)Component 4: Knowledge management and M&E.
Concrete practices designed to consider and take account of biodiversity and ecosystem services will be mainstreamed into policies and practices for forest area planning and management and into land allocation decision-making for strategic plantations/commodities siting. In relation to this, UNDP is looking for a highly qualified individual to be a Project Asssitant for the project.
This position is located primarily in project management unit under overall guidance project officer or in a large project report to National Project Manager to support the project on a day-to-day basis to cover administration functions such as procurement, HR, general office and general project administration. (Note: Security is a key function can be covered under this position and should be factored as an essential project management/ operational costs. However, security personnel are normally outsourced.)
Under the overall guidance of the NPM (National Project Manager), the Project Assistant provides project support services ensuring high quality of work, ensures accurate, timely and properly recorded/documented service delivery