Peraturan Pemerintah (PP) No.2 Year 2008 is probably the most ridiculous PP ever made. Briefly speaking, this PP permits acts of clearing for mining, telecommunication infrastructure, and toll road for just three hundred rupiahs per square meters per year. In my opinion, this PP will bring harm, to environment and eventually to us humans, if applied.
First, the act of clearing means sabotaging human life. Forest gives us many benefits: fresh air to breathe, pure water that flowing out from springs, woods and logs, and home for wild animals. People who can think clearly will agree that those benefits are too large to be compared with minerals that are buried under it. If clearing is commenced, there will be less water and fresh air, and those wild animals will attack villages and towns in search of food. In the end, our life is affected and—possibly—shortened by them.
Second, mining makes reforestation difficult. The rich and nutritious soil, called top soil, is only thirty centimeters deep from the surface, and—of course—those minerals lies deeper than that. In order to extract minerals, the earth must be dug up. Because of that, the top soil will be mixed with less nutritional soil, which is bad because trees won’t grow well there. Plus, it’s common knowledge that miners—especially illegal ones—don’t take all of mined minerals. Sometimes they leave behind those that are un-extract-able. This is bad because those minerals will poison water and plants, make them harder to grow.
Of course, we cannot forget that the PP isn’t fully about mining. It’s about transportation and telecommunication. Those two aspects are probably most important in this globalization era.
In conclusion, the government should inspect this PP more closely. It should be adjusted so the forest won’t be sacrificed for only one act of mining. After all, human wellbeing is more or less linked with forest wellbeing.
-M. Ferdyansyah Sechan 16107056-
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