EU and RI furge a partnership in development

EU and RI furge a partnership in development

The European Union (EU) is Indonesia's second-largest donor.
Funds totaling Rp 8.6 trillion in official development assistance
to Indonesia have been provided by the European Commission (EC)
and by EU member states during the period 1976 to 1996. The EC's
own commitment for this period was Rp 815 billion, of which 90
percent has been for development assistance.

Since it was initiated in 1976, cooperation between the
Indonesian government and the EC has focused on Indonesia's own
development priorities, covering sectors such as rural
development, science and technology, energy and the environment,
to name the prominent areas of the partnership.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the EC's development
cooperation program emphasized support for the Indonesian
government's efforts to maintain self-sufficiency in rice while
also supporting the consolidation of a more diversified
agricultural base. EC-funded programs, therefore, have focused on
irrigation and drainage, palawija seed production and marketing,
animal husbandry, fisheries and rural credit.

Through a budget line for non-government organization (NGO)
projects, the EC has supported 51 NGO projects since 1992
totaling ECU 3 million. The main activities funded were in the
fields of health, income generation activities and education and
development, each accounting for some 20 percent of the total.
The geographical coverage of the projects has been nationwide,
with areas like Maluku and East Kalimantan absorbing 50 percent
of all funds.

Cooperation in forestry

Indonesia's forests represent 10 percent of the world's
remaining tropical forests. Based on the country's latest
statistics, the present forest land area is 140.4 million
hectares, of which 113.8 million hectares are classified as
permanent forests and the remaining 26.6 million hectares as
convertible forests.

While 113.8 million hectares seems vast, not all of it is
covered with trees, and the condition of many forest areas is
poor. During the sixth five-year development plan (REPELITA VI),
1992/1993 to 1997/1998, it was expected that three million
hectares of forests would disappear due to conversion to
nonforest purposes, for example, agriculture, resettlement,
transmigration, plantation projects, roads, dams, etc.

Additional forest losses are caused by shifting cultivation,
forest fires, commercial forest harvesting and illegal logging.
Furthermore, there are more and more land-use conflicts involving
local populations which are dependent on the utilization of their
traditional forest resources. Because of this, the government and
the EC decided to focus the development cooperation program more
on sustainable forest management and forest conservation. As a
result, two-thirds of the EC contribution to the program is now
in these two fields.

In the field of conservation and protection, the main focus is
on the Leuser Development Program, which aims to conserve the
Leuser Ecosystem, including the Gunung Leuser National Park, and
to promote sustainable development of the surrounding areas. In
this program, the EC is supporting economic activities in the
buffer zone of the national park, the development of appropriate
ecotourism, the establishment of park boundaries and, last but
not least, to build a program of support and awareness with local
partners, including the communities in and around the park.

Another important program which is supported by the EC is the
Forest Fire Prevention and Control Project. This project is
involved in developing a model for a fire management system
appropriate for South Sumatra. During the height of the forest
fires in 1997, this project supported the government in its
efforts in controlling the fires by donating ECU 326,000, which
was used for the procurement of fire-fighting equipment and
expertise as well as for a study using remote sensing to monitor
the growth of the fires and their impact.

The fire project works in cooperation with another EC-
supported project, the Forest Inventory and Monitoring Project,
which aims at strengthening the Ministry of Forestry's capacity
for forest planning and monitoring, thereby supporting both
sustainable forest management and conservation. One of the
outputs of this project will be a comprehensive and "user-
friendly" Integrated Forest Resource Information System.