Protecting our rain forests

Protecting our rain forests

By the time you finish reading this sentence, approximately
five more hectares of tropical forests will have disappeared from
the surface of this globe. Or, bringing the comparison closer to
home, an area of tropical forest the size of Jakarta disappears
from our Earth every 35 hours.

This dire pronouncement is based on 1990 FAO figures which
measure the rate of deforestation of the world's diminishing
tropical forests.

Tropical forests constitute one of the most fiercely debated
environmental issues in the world today. Although it is not fully
understood yet, there is a link between tropical forests and the
global weather and climate. According to one argument,
deforestation in developing countries is estimated to account for
up to 20 percent of the greenhouse effect, which traps heat in
the atmosphere and causes a slow increase in global temperatures.

Tropical forests are also believed to be the richest of the
world's ecosystems, containing uncharted genetic materials deemed
vital to human existence. At the same time these forests are
known to be very vulnerable to human intrusion. Once a rain
forest is cleared, no amount of effort at reforestation will
bring back the original ecosystem.

Thus environmentalists around the world, especially in
industrialized countries, have strong points to make when they
put forth political pressure to preserve the remaining tropical
forests. Barriers against importation of tropical timber and wood
products in certain countries are cases in point. Arguing that
these nations are protectionists rather than environmentalists,
or that they only do what they do after they have devastated
their own forests, does not address the problem of sustaining the
world's fast diminishing tropical forests.

Indonesia has the third largest tropical forest reserves in
the world. We are not sure about the exact area still covered by
tropical forests in this country. The official figure still
stands at around 140 million hectares, and has not been changed
for years.

According to a UNDP report released last May, however,
Indonesia has only 111.4 million hectares of closed and virgin
forests left. It is not very difficult to figure out how fast
Indonesia has been cutting down its forests since logging started
in this country in the late 1960s.

It is within the above context that one should address the
government's plan to reduce Indonesia's timber output by almost
30 percent over the next five years. As announced by the Minister
of Forestry, Djamaloedin Soeryohadikoesoemo, the other day, this
country's timber output will be reduced from the 31.4 million
cubic meters in the past five years to 22.5 million cubic meters
in the coming five years.

A similar statement was made by the Director General of
Inventory and Forest Land Use, Titus Sarijanto, in a hearing with
the House of Representatives a month ago. He said that the
government would persistently enforce the cutting cycle of 35
years to allow for natural regeneration.

One could deduce from that statement that the deforestation
process in this country has been going on faster than publicly
acknowledged. One could even question the validity of the claim
that about 79 percent of Indonesia's rain forests are being
preserved, as blatantly pronounced almost every night in TV
commercials.

The question remains however, whether this time the plan will
be executed effectively. For over two decades now we have been
fed by claims that this country treats its tropical forests with
care, guaranteed by what the government proudly calls the
"Indonesian Selective Cutting System". While, in fact, forestry
officials themselves have acknowledged that around 80 percent of
the estimated 560 forest concessionaires have not fully
implemented the system. Early this year for example it was
announced that in fiscal year 1992-1993, only 13.6 percent of the
forest concession holders in this country fulfilled the
government logging rules. And even that figure was mentioned as
an "improvement" compared to a year earlier.

The major challenge here seems to be the capacity of the
Ministry of Forestry itself to make sure that its policy is
adhered to. Its officials are poorly paid like other civil
servants, underqualified to inspect the concessions, under-
equipped to do their jobs properly, and are highly vulnerable to
bribes offered by cash-rich logging firms. Thus it seems that if,
indeed, we are serious about mending the situation, the time has
come to follow up on the stated intentions with more efficacious
actions, challenging as that task may be.