Mega Rice Project

The goal was to turn one million hectares of unproductive and sparsely populated peat swamp forest into rice paddies in an effort to alleviate Indonesia's growing food shortage.

The peat swamp forest in the south of Kalimantan is an unusual ecoregion that is home to many unique or rare species such as orangutans, as well as to slow-growing but valuable trees.

[citation needed] The peat swamp forests of Kalimantan were being slowly cleared for small scale farming and plantations before 1997, but most of the original cover remained.

[citation needed] Where the forests had often flooded up to 2m deep in the rainy season, now their surface is dry at all times of the year.

The government has therefore abandoned the MRP, but the drying peat is vulnerable to fires which continue to break out on a massive scale.