Battered Southeast Asia faces uphill battle saving its forests<\/p>\n
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Southeast Asia wasn't winning any medals for forestry
\npreservation back when the region's economy was booming.
\nAfter five years of economic doldrums, the toss-up between quick
\nbucks off trees or sustainable development hasn't gotten easier
\nfor regional governments.<\/p>\n
Indonesia serves as a good example. Two of its most promising
\nexport industries - palm oil and pulp - threaten to hasten the
\ndemise of the sprawling archipelago's fast-disappearing forests.<\/p>\n
Global demand for palm oil is expected to nearly double from
\n22.5 million tons a year now to 40 million tons in 2020, and to
\nmeet that demand Indonesia is likely to increase its palm oil
\nplantations by 3 million hectares, probably on what is now forest
\nland, according to the World Wildlife Fund.<\/p>\n
Indonesia's pulp and paper industry poses an even greater
\nthreat to the country's forests, which have been disappearing at
\nan alarming rate of 2 million hectares each year since 1997.<\/p>\n
A score of giant pulp mills, including the world's two
\nlargest, are located in Sumatra, the legacy of former president
\nSuharto's corruption-tainted policy of passing out huge
\nconcessions of forest land to timber tycoons who were supposed to
\nreplant fast-growing trees as part of the deal.<\/p>\n
The tendency was to clear cut the trees on their concessions
\nand then buy illegally-cut timber for their mills from nearby
\nnational parks, neglecting the expensive and time-consuming
\nprocess of replanting.<\/p>\n
Although many of the pulp giants were hit by the 1997
\nfinancial crisis and should be bankrupt, the government has
\ndeclared the sector a priority industry, and will probably
\nrestructure their debt early next year and even allow them to
\nexpand to generate more employment and export earnings.<\/p>\n
"We're seeing a potential collision between one set of public
\nobjectives and another one, and one of them is short term and
\nvery pressing and the other one is long term, and easily left to
\nthe next government," said Thomas Walton, the World Bank's chief
\nenvironmentalist in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
With an estimated 40-45 million people unemployed or
\nunderemployed in Indonesia, the government is not likely to close
\ndown pulp mills or prevent palm oil planting this year for the
\nsake of the forests.<\/p>\n
Cambodia is another country that has launched shady timber
\nconcessions and now faces growing pressure from environmentalists
\nto cancel them.<\/p>\n
In 1999, the 13 logging concessionaires agreed to draw up 25-
\nyear logging plans along with environmental and social impact
\nassessments.<\/p>\n
When they failed to meet the 2001 deadline, Cambodian Prime
\nMinister Hun Sen slapped a moratorium on all logging in the
\ncountry until the assessments were completed and had received
\ngovernment approval.<\/p>\n
Although the companies finally presented their impact reports
\nand logging plans in mid-November last year, they allowed only a
\nmeager 19-day period given to community members to review them,
\nprompting environmentalists to cry foul.<\/p>\n
Laos, whose main national resources include trees and hydro-
\npower, is in danger of losing the latter to massive illegal
\nlogging in its northeastern hinterland.<\/p>\n
Donors have been pressuring the country to stop the rape of
\nits own forests, which threaten its watersheds and hydro-electric
\npotential, but the lure of fast money in one of the world's
\npoorest countries is a daunting obstacle.<\/p>\n
Thailand and the Philippines don't have much forest land left
\nto rape.<\/p>\n
A century ago, more than 85 percent of Thailand's
\napproximately 500,000 square kilometer area was covered in thick
\ntropical forests.<\/p>\n
That figure was reduced to about 53 percent by 1962 and to
\nonly 29.4 percent by 1985, according to Forestry Department
\nstatistics.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the accelerating pace of forest destruction, the
\ngovernment outlawed commercial logging in 1985, but population
\npressure from Thailand's approximately 75,000 villages has
\nnibbled away at the remaining forests and today only about 25
\npercent of the country is covered in natural forest, most of it
\nwithin about 100 national parks.<\/p>\n
In the Philippines, according to the latest data from the
\nDepartment of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), as of
\n1996, only 5.493 million hectares of the country's 15 million
\nhectares of "forest areas" have actual forest cover.<\/p>\n
Antonio Carandang, a DENR community-based forest management
\nspecialist, said deforestation has slowed in the country because
\nthe remaining forest lands were in hard-to-reach areas.<\/p>\n
"Most of our remaining virgin forest covers are high up in the
\nmountains surrounded by treacherous terrains," he said. "So we
\ncan say they have natural protection from unwanted intruders."<\/p>\n
Carandang said that now illegal logging activities were mainly
\ndone in secondary growth areas or former timberlands which were
\nalready abandoned by concessionaires.<\/p>\n
"If you just leave these overlogged areas untouched, the
\nforest will regenerate by themselves. Unfortunately, since these
\nareas were already abandoned and there's a road network to these
\nplaces, illegal loggers taken advantage of them," Carandang said.<\/p>\n
He added that the Philippines' galloping population growth put
\na lot of pressure on the forests, especially the secondary
\nforests.<\/p>",
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