A lower court in the Jakarta suburb of Bogor ruled in October in favor of environmental scientists Bambang Hero Sarahjo and Basuki Wasis, dismissing a lawsuit brought by Borneo plantation firm PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri over a wildfire more than seven years ago. “Hopefully this will set a good precedent to protect environmental defenders and activists and enable the effort to rescue the deteriorating environment without the threat of pressure and lawsuits,” Bambang told Mongabay Indonesia in response to the ruling. Bambang and Basuki are professors at Bogor Institute of Agriculture, Indonesia’s premier forestry university. The government has frequently called on both academics to provide testimony as expert witnesses in wildfires cases brought by the forestry ministry against plantation companies. In 2018, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry brought a case against PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri, which was heard in the Kapuas district court in Central Kalimantan province. The government alleged the company was culpable for a fire covering 833 hectares (2,058 acres) using the principle of “strict liability,” which holds companies ultimately responsible for any damage. In court, the government relied on peatland samples measured by Bambang, who is head of the wildfires laboratory at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, from several sites on the PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri concession taken during November 2018. The court judgment noted testimony that the area burned was approximately 833 hectares (2,058 acres), which was both Bambang’s conclusion and “in accordance with the results of measurements by the Central Kalimantan Provincial Plantation Service.”…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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