Serious concern about the threats and damage to the Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra (TRHS) have been raised by UNESCO and IUCN since the property’s inscription in 2004. In 2011, the TRHS was inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger and, in 2014, the Committee described the corrective measures necessary to attain a desired state of conservation that would justify removing the property from the ‘in danger’ list . Those corrective measures include tackling poaching, illegal logging, encroachment and proposed road developments, and improving management and law enforcement. However, recent official reports indicate that environmental crimes within the property, such as poaching, illegal logging and encroachment, continue at very high levels and may even be increasing. The damage occurring to lowland tropical rainforests and the habitat of species such as orangutans, rhinos, tigers and elephants is therefore continuing at a high level. There is no authoritative evidence that populations of key species have stabilised. Law enforcement is totally inadequate; the numbers of arrests documented by the State Party comprise a tiny fraction of the numbers of illegal incidents reported. Management of the TRHS is also inadequate due to the absence of a property-wide management plan and structure. The legal framework is complex. Serious concern remains about the impact of the Aceh Spatial Plan, whose objectives include increased resource extraction from the Gunung Leuser National Park (GLNP) component of the property and its surroundings. The boundaries of the GLNP component of the property remain unclear. Requests from the Committee for a rationalisation of the boundaries to exclude areas whose contribution to the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) has been destroyed, and to include additional habitat of key species, have not been met. A prohibition on the development of geothermal energy within protected areas in Indonesia has recently been removed – this creates additional uncertainties about future protection of the property, despite the State Party’s undertaking that geothermal development within the TRHS will not be permitted. Proposed developments on the periphery of the property, including hydro dams, geothermal development and new roads, pose additional threats to the site’s integrity.

On the positive side is the State Party’s undertaking not to allow geothermal development within the property (hopefully this will be both legislated and communicated strongly to would-be developers and to provincial authorities); its completion of an SEA into road development (though it is not yet clear how this will translate into a protective policy); and the recent significant improvement in the numbers of patrols and their equipment. Hopefully, this will lead to a massive improvement in law enforcement, including arrests, prosecutions, convictions and penalties, which are necessary for the property to maintain its OUV and integrity. The TRHS, thanks to its size and diversity, retains its OUV despite the above threats, but a concerted effort on the part of the State Party and the international community is necessary to reverse the deterioration in the property’s condition. In particular, the State Party must deploy all of the resources at its disposal to rein in environmental crime and to ensure that local and provincial authorities become part of the international effort to protect this irreplaceable World Heritage property.

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