By: Maya Bellina

The year 2012 became a momentum for PT Sarana Multi Infrastruktur (PT SMI) to realize its commitment to the environment. Not only being a part of WWF-Indonesia's Green Networking Corporate Club, now PT SMI also increases its role to improve the welfare of the community around Mount Rinjani National Park.

For the nearly 3 million inhabitants of Lombok Island, 90% of its water supply comes from the forested area of Mount Rinjani. The region has lost 43% of its water sources in just the last 10 years. This has been exacerbated by deforestation since 1998, which has resulted in the loss of 500,000 ha of forest. Of the 30% of forest area remaining, 40,000 ha of it requires an immediate rehabilitation program.

Departing from the vision of becoming a reliable and trusted catalyst for infrastructure development, PT SMI has also begun to play an active role in developing the socio-economic capacity of communities along with reforestation efforts in Eastern Indonesia. This is reflected in the implementation of the NEWtrees program where community involvement starts from program design, preparation of tree seedlings, planting, maintenance as well as intensive periodic monitoring for two years, to securing the planting area.

This activity also provides a new discourse for the community to monitor tree growth directly through Geotag technology to retrieve latitude and longitude coordinate information. Therefore, monitoring of tree planting in the field can be more accurate and responsible by all parties who need it.

This good coordination and synergy between institutions not only makes PT SMI a strategic partner of the government in its efforts to accelerate national development, but also an important partner for conservation organizations to become pioneers and examples for other corporations to implement good environmental management practices (best practice management) as an added value to the good governance principles that it has implemented.