RI, Japan launch program against haze, illegal logging
RI, Japan launch program against haze, illegal logging
Agence France-Presse, Johannesburg, South Africa
Indonesia joined forces on Thursday with Japan, its top export market for timber, to launch a regional forestry program to help battle forest fires and haze, and rampant illegal logging in its vast archipelago.
The Asia Forestry Partnership, involving 12 countries and eight global organizations, will boost Indonesia's forest law enforcement and resources to protest its dwindling forests, said forestry planning agency director general Boen Purnama.
The country lost some two million hectares (4,800,000 acres) of forest annually between 1990 and 2000, he said on the sidelines of the UN Earth Summit.
"The partnership will strengthen our capacity to battle forest fires and illegal logging, and this is critical in a time of economic weakness where many sectors are thinking only of short- term gains," he told AFP.
Indonesia has come under pressure from neighboring Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore to take action over its forest fires which have sent smoke haze over the region almost annually since 1997.
It is also battling an epidemic of illegal logging -- fueled by corruption and lawlessness -- that doubled its deforestation rate in the late 1990s and prompted conservationists to warn its forests might disappear within five to 15 years.
Japan's ambassador for global environment and international economic affairs Kazuo Asakai said the partnership was a collective action to curb forest degradation in Asia which was continuing at an "alarming rate."
Some 12.3 million hectares of tropical forests have disappeared between 1990 and 2000, officials said.
The forestry partnership, involving Australia, Britain, Cambodia, France, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, the United States and the European Union, will develop regional actions to prevent fire and rehabilitate degraded lands, Asakai said.
They will cooperate on satellite data and mapping for forest management, research and information exchange to control forest fires and haze, and develop a tracking and verification mechanism to stamp out trade of illegally harvested timber, he said.
The partnership is open to other interested entities and will hold its first meeting Nov. 11 in Tokyo, he added.
Purnama urged Malaysia, believed to be a transit point for Indonesian illegal timber before being shipped to final markets in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, to join the partnership.
Malaysia in June banned log imports from Indonesia but he said illegally felled logs were exported in the form of processed timber, and this posed a challenge for both countries.
Indonesia's forest cover fell from 162 million hectares in 1950 to only 98 million hectares in 2000.
It has also banned log and woodchip exports to protect its forests and proposed setting up a court to prosecute environmental looters, a move it says will reduce illegal logging and protect the local timber trade.