Habibie seeks review of forestry policies
JAKARTA (JP): President B.J. Habibie on Thursday sought a review of government policies on the exploitation of forests, which he said had so far benefited only certain groups.
"In this reform era, we have to review our policies on forest exploitation (to protect) public interests," he said at the commemoration of National Natural Conservation and Reforestation Day.
Deforestation occurs when people want to exploit forests without regard of the nation's future, he said as quoted by Antara. "Self-interest has been put above public interest, and this often harms the people."
Careless policy, he said, caused serious damage to the country's forest reserves while it took hundreds of years for damaged forests to recover.
Meanwhile the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia called on the government on Thursday to rein in timber companies and stop conversion of its remaining natural forests into agricultural land for oil palm and other plantations.
The move was needed to save the world's last remaining orangutans and other endangered species, the conservation group said in a statement.
It said the 1997/1998 forest fires had caused Indonesia's forests to shrink at an unsustainable rate. With some 5.5 million hectares of Sumatra and Kalimantan earmarked for palm oil plantations, and another 24.5 million hectares of Eastern Indonesia earmarked for conversion, "the government must now act to protect remaining forests and concentrate plantation development solely on land already genuinely degraded by fires or other causes," the body said in the statement.
The 1997/98 fires that ravaged up to 10 million hectares of Kalimantan and Sumatra, were largely caused by an opening up of forest areas by plantation companies and a resulting influx of people.
Poor land use planning, poor forest management by timber concessions, and badly controlled burning for land clearing and during the El Nino drought conditions all contributed to the disaster, WWF said.
The fires and resulting haze, which cost Indonesia and neighboring countries an estimated US$4.5 billion and brought massive dislocation to much of Southeast Asia, left vast tracts of degraded land. The most degraded of this land could be used for oil palm and other plantation estates, which are crucial export earners for Indonesia's economy, the WWF said.
The approach, which would involve major changes in government land allocation practices, both at national and provincial levels, could spell survival for orangutans and other endangered species pushed to the brink of extinction by the loss of their rainforest habitat.
"Even before the 1997 fires, orangutan habitat in Indonesia and Malaysia declined by an estimated 80 percent in the 1970s and 1980s," the group said in its statement.
"Some 40 percent of the 1997/98 Kalimantan fires occurred in areas with orangutan populations," the WWF said.