RI's degraded forest area doubles in one year

RI's degraded forest area doubles in one year

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Illegal logging and forest fires have exacerbated the
environmental destruction in the country, with degraded forest
areas increasing at an alarming level, a government official
says.

Head of Research and Development at the Ministry of Forestry
Agus Sarsito said on Tuesday that degraded forest areas had
reached at total of 54.6 million hectares in 2002, up from 23.9
million hectares in 2001.

Agus said the government would only be able to recover 1.4
million hectares of the degraded forest over the next five years
through its reforestation program.

"Besides those degraded forests, there was also 41.7 million
hectares of degraded non-forest land in 2002," he said in a paper
presented at a seminar on Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

He also said that Indonesia had a total 120.3 million hectares
of forest, or about 60 percent of its total land area.

As part of its efforts to reduce forest degradation, Agus said
the government had continuously reduced the annual cut of forest
concessionaires.

However, environmental activists said the move would not be
effective, as it did not resolve the illegal logging that has
worsened the country's already degraded forests.

The government has also launched a reforestation program
covering three million hectares of degraded areas -- 1.4 million
hectares of degraded forest and 1.6 million hectares of degraded
non-forest land -- over the next five years with a fund of Rp 15
trillion.

The rehabilitation program is being financed by the
reforestation fund.

The government initially targeted for rehabilitation nine
million hectares of degraded land, but this would have required a
fund of Rp 45 trillion.

Agus said that the ministry had also identified possible
locations of rehabilitation program that may be eligible for CDM
projects with assistance from the Australian government and the
World Bank.

Under CDM, an developed country can compensate its high
greenhouse gas (GHG) or carbon dioxide (CO2) emission by
providing incentives to developing countries to use
environmentally friendly technology to limit their GHG emission.

Besides incentives, the developed country must also reduce its
GHG emission within its own territory, as required by the Kyoto
Protocol.

Despite their rehabilitation program, the government has made
a counterproductive move by planning to allow 22 mining firms to
resume operating in protected forests.

Gunardi, deputy assistant of climate change and atmosphere
affairs at the Office of the State Minister for the Environment,
said that such information from the ministry should be
transparent and accurate.

"Sometimes we are confused about the ministry's information,
which always changes and is different from information at other
ministries. I hope we can start issuing a single set of
information," he said.

Meanwhile, Liana Bratasida, Deputy of Environmental
Conservation at the state minister's office, said the ministry
would offer 30 projects in exchange for incentives from the CDM
program of developed countries.

Gunardi said Indonesia had secured only one CDM project from
the Dutch government, which has pledged ti give US$26 million to
the Wayang Windu geothermal power plant from 2008 to 2012 for its
ability to reduce certain amount of CO2 emission.