Riau
Riau is currently one of the richest provinces in Indonesia and is rich with natural resources, particularly petroleum, natural gas, rubber, palm oil and fiber plantations. However extensive logging has led to a massive decline in forest cover from 78% in 1982 to only 33% in 2005. This has been further reduced an average of 160,000 hectares per year on average, leaving 22%, or 2.45 million hectares left as of 2009. Deforestation for palm oil and paper has led to not only perennial serious haze over the province, but in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, intensifying flooding and landslides. Kuala Lumpur and surrounds has been sent into "unhealthy" air quality levels again in mid-2012 from Indonesian haze originating in Riau.Since the 1970s, much of Indonesia has experienced declining population growth rates. Riau has been a significant exception, with increasing rates every decade since 1970 to a 4.35 percent annual rise for the 1990s. The provincial population is 5,543,031.
Riau Province is home to various dialects of the Malay and Chinese language. The dominant language used by the Malay population is Malay. The Chinese population speak a variety of Chinese dialects, the most common being Min Nan, originating from the southern part of Fujian province in the south-eastern part of China.
The dialect of Malay spoken in Riau Province is considered by linguists to have one of the least complex grammars among the languages of the world, apart from creoles, possessing neither noun declensions, temporal distinctions, subject/object distinctions, nor singular/plural distinction. For example, the phrase Ayam makan can mean, in context, anything from 'the chicken is eating', to 'I ate some chicken', 'the chicken that is eating' and 'when we were eating chicken'. The traditional script in Riau is Jawi (locally known in Indonesia as "Arab-Melayu"), an Arabic-based writing in the Malay language. A possible reason for this is that Riau Malay has been used as a lingua franca for communication between different people in this area during its history, and extensive foreign-language speaker use of this kind tends to simplify the grammar of a language used.
It is sometimes supposed that Riau Malay is the basis for the modern national language, Indonesian. However, it is instead based on Classical Malay, the court language of Johor-Riau Sultanate, based primarily from the one used in the Riau archipelago and the state of Johor, Malaysia, which is distinct from the local mainland Riau dialect.
Riau Province is subdivided into 10 regencies and 2 autonomous cities, listed below with their areas and populations at the 2000 and 2010 Censuses.
The economy of Riau expands faster than the Indonesian average (6.04% in 2006), and is largely a resource-based economy, including crude oil (600,000 bpd), palm oil, rubber trees and other forest products. Local government income benefits from a greater share of tax revenue (mainly from crude oil) due to the decentralization law of 2004.
Riau's forest area has been reduced by around 2 million from 8 million ha. Giam Siak Kecil รข€" Bukit Batu Biosphere Reserve, Indonesia, is a peatland area in Sumatra featuring sustainable timber production and two wildlife reserves, which are home to the Sumatra tiger, elephant, tapir, and sun bear. Research activities in the biosphere include the monitoring of flagship species and in-depth study on peatland ecology. Initial studies indicate a real potential for sustainable economic development using native flora and fauna for the economic benefit of local inhabitants.
Cagar Biosfer Giam Siak Kecil Bukit Batu is one of seven Biosphere Reserves in Indonesia. They are located in two areas of Riau Province, Bengkalis and Siak. CB-GSK-BB is a trial presented by Riau at the 21st Session of the International Coordinating Council of Man and the Biosphere (UNESCO) in Jeju, South Korea, on May 26, 2009. CB-GSK-BB is one of 22 proposed locations in 17 countries accepted as reserves for the year. A Biosphere Reserve is the only internationally recognized concept of environmental conservation and cultivation. Thus the supervision and development of CB-GSK-BB is a worldwide concern at a regional level.
CB-GSK-BB is a unique type of Peat Swamp Forest in the Kampar Peninsula Peat Forest. Another peculiarity is that the CB-GSK-BB was initiated by private parties in cooperation with the government through BBKSDA (The Center for the Conservation of Natural Resources), including the notorious conglomerate involved in forest destruction, Sinar Mas Group, owning the largest paper and pulp company in Indonesia.
