Govt to launch reforestation program

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government plans to launch an ambitious reforestation program on three million hectares of degraded land on Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi islands between 2003 and 2008 with total cost of Rp 15 trillion (US$1.6 billion).

State Minister of Environment Nabiel Makarim said the government would start the reforestation program on 600,000 hectares of land this year at a cost of Rp 3 trillion.

"We will do the program in cooperation with regional administrations and local people living in surrounding forests," Nabiel said Tuesday.

The government would plant various kinds of trees, including fruit trees, to benefit local people, he said.

He did not elaborate on where the money for the program would be sourced.

A number of floods and landslides, caused by rampant deforestation, among other factors, have hit many parts of the archipelago, claiming hundreds of lives and trillions of rupiah of material losses.

Nabiel said about 136 people had died in 133 natural disasters, including floods and landslides, between January and February this year alone.

The deforestation rate has reportedly reached 2 million hectares annually.

The Ministry of Forestry said earlier that forest destruction had reached 54 million hectares or almost half of the country's total forests of 120 million hectares.

In a bid to arrest further destruction, the government is also planning to issue regulations on spatial planning for Indonesia's main islands to help maintain green areas.

Nabiel said that besides the reforestation program, the government would also enforce the existing laws to protect the forests, especially the environment law to curb illegal logging.

"We will earmark billions of rupiah to enforce the law, like a plan to appoint 34 special judges to handle environmental law violations," he said.

Separately, Karliansyah, an assistant deputy to the state minister of environment, said environmental destruction also occurred in projects completed with environmental impact assessment (Amdal) studies.

He said his office had evaluated 33 Amdal studies -- out of more than 7,000 Amdal studies -- and found out that 80 percent of those evaluated should not have been approved.

"Those Amdal studies were so poor. So, imagine the impact of those approvals," he said.

He blamed various ministries which approved the studies.

Until 1999, the studies were carried out by Amdal institutions in various ministries and approved by relevant ministries.

Afterward, they were conducted by independent consultants and approved by the Environmental Impact Management Agency (Bapedal) or its provincial branches (Bapedalda).

Then, Bapedal was merged into the office of the state minister of the environment.