Indonesian Forests:
the Endangered
Beauty
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Indonesia’s forests are an extraordinary natural phenomenon, of
immense value and beauty. Over ten per cent of the planet’s
diversity of plants and animals are found only in Indonesia,
including orangutan, elephants, tigers, rhinoceros, a thousand
species of birds, and thousands of plant species. The
archipelago is also home to hundreds of indigenous groups who have
lived from and managed Indonesia’s forests for thousands of years.
The forests provide food, medicines, building materials and clothing
fibers, not only for indigenous communities, but also for world
markets.
Indonesia also possesses more endangered species than any other
country in the world largely because of deforestation. At least 72%
of Indonesia’s natural forest is gone (WRI, 1997). The rate of
deforestation is continuing to rise.
Forest loss in Indonesia
doubled during the 1990’s, and by 2000, 3.8 million hectares were
being cleared every year. |
This is equivalent to six times the rate
of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon. The remaining lowland
forests of Indonesia will be destroyed within a decade unless the
logging and large plantation industry can be brought under control.
Impacts
For the last 30 years, the Indonesian Government has handed out
logging, plantation and mining concessions covering the majority of
Indonesia’s forests. The Government has systematically violated
indigenous and community rights by handing out logging and large
plantation concessions and creating protected areas on customary
lands without the consent of the indigenous and local communities as
owners. Communities that used to manage and protect their forests
have been forcibly evicted or have become illegal squatters on the
lands of their ancestors. Deforestation is also putting many species
that people depend on for food, medicines and other purposes under
pressure. Some of Indonesia’s poorest people are forest communities
who suffer increasing poverty levels as their forests disappear.
The plight for plant, animal and bird species is dire. Each
year, hundreds of thousand of hectares of forests are logged or
converted to plantations, leaving little space for thousands of
forest dependent creatures. Orangutan numbers have been reduced by
90 per cent over the last century and there are only 500 Sumatran
tigers left in the wild.
An ever-decreasing forest cover has left huge areas of Indonesia
more prone to disasters – drought, flood and landslide. Since 1998
until mid 2003 there have been 647 disasters causing the deaths of
2022 people and billions of rupiah in property damage. According to
the national disaster-management body, 85% of the disasters were
floods and landslides. Many of these can be linked to forest damage.
(http://www.eng.walhi.or.id/)
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