Critical land in Java main priority for forest policy

Critical land in Java main priority for forest policy

Sri Wahyuni and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post,
Yogyakarta/Jakarta

Replanting Java's critical woodland has become the main priority
for the government's reforestation program this year after
drought has devastated several rice-producing regencies across
the island.

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla said
over the weekend that the government had earmarked some Rp 1.2
trillion (US$120 million) for reforestation projects that will
begin in 2003, with Java getting the bulk of it.

"We will prioritize (revitalizing) forests on Java, especially
those that are vital water catchment areas," he said in
Yogyakarta over the weekend.

Kalla said the government would try to carry out reforestation
programs covering 300,000 hectares of critical land in 15
provinces and 154 regencies across the country.

The government, according to Jusuf Kalla, is targeting 21,000
hectares of conservation forests, 65,000 hectares of protected
forests, 79,000 hectares of production forest, and 149,000
hectares of "other" critical areas.

Almost 100,000 hectares, or one third of the amount to be
replanted, will be on Java, Jusuf Kalla said while quoting data
from the ministry of forestry.

Tachrir Fathoni of the ministry of forestry said the areas on
Java targeted for reforestation would not include any of the land
that state-owned forestry company PT Perhutani -- which has
rights to some 2 million hectares -- operates on.

This year, a 5-year, 3 million-hectare reforestation program
began across the country. Next year, some 500,000 hectares of
critical land are expected to be reforested.

The government has theorized that the cause of the
increasingly worse weather extremes, such as drought and
flooding, was due to uncontrolled destruction of forests which
function as water catchment areas, among other things.

"We expect the reforestation program to be able to prevent
ponds and reservoirs from drying up when in future dry seasons,"
he said.

Tachrir, who is the spokesman for the Forestry Ministry, said
that his ministry was expected to start planting some areas later
this year, pending the disbursement of the money from the
government.

"We also want to wait for the rainy season (before starting to
cultivate) as the young trees will need sufficient water to grow
properly," he explained, while adding that the government had
started to think about a reforestation plan earlier this year.

Tachrir said he was optimistic that the government would be
able to go ahead with this year's reforestation program.

"The cultivation will be conducted by regional administrations
with the central government's assistance," he said.

Each of the new trees will take between seven and 80 years to
grow to a size with any commercial value. Tachrir said that the
reforestation plan also includes a program to monitor the sprout
development to prevent illegal logging of young trees.

"We will take care of the monitoring," he said without
elaborating.

Tachrir said the government's commitment to reforest some 3
million hectares of critical land would only be able to cover
small parts of some 43 million hectares of the denuded former
forests, or an area more than half the size of Kalimantan, that
has been damaged in just the past five years.

Although the forestry ministry claims that there are some 104
million hectares of old growth forest remaining, local and
international ecology organizations have put the number at only
60 million hectares at present, after losing more than 75 percent
of its forests to exploitation in the past three decades.

The condition of the country's forests, once known as the
second-largest source of biodiversity in the world after Brazil,
started to decline after the president Soeharto's New Order
regime exploited the forests in a completely unregulated manner
and allowed huge mines to be dug throughout the wild lands of the
archipelago. Mining and forestry were two of its major money-
making machines.

Unfortunately, the governments that have succeeded Soeharto
have continued exploit the forests at a an extremely alarming
rate. President Megawati Soekarnoputri's regime has, for example,
given the green light to several mining companies to operate
gigantic open-pit mines in protected forests.