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.