Govt continues drive to revive forests

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government plans to rehabilitate 900,000 hectares of forestland this year in its effort to meet an overall target of restoring 5 million ha by 2009.

Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban said Friday that since the inception of the National Rehabilitation Movement (Gerhan) project in 2003, some 2.3 million ha of forestland has been rehabilitated.

"We're focusing on recovering forests on Java first because there is not yet a tree planting culture there," Kaban told The Jakarta Post after opening a Gerhan meeting.

Kaban said Indonesia still faces a number of serious forestry predicaments, such as illegal logging, forest fires and increasing rates of deforestation.

"Deforestation (in Indonesia) has become the center of attention for the international world.

"This has become a global issue because it is considered to have a strong correlation to global warming, which the world is worried about," Kaban said.

Greenpeace applied to the Guinness Book of World Records last month to have Indonesia included in its 2008 edition for having had the fastest rate of deforestation in the world between 2000 and 2005.

Kaban highlighted the importance of reforestation, saying it correlates to three of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, to ensure environmental sustainability and to develop a global partnership for development.

This year, the government has earmarked Rp 4.1 trillion (US$454 million) from the ministry's rehabilitation fund and the state budget to rehabilitate damaged forestlands throughout Indonesia.

At the Gerhan meeting, the director general for social forestry and land rehabilitation, Darori, said Rp 3.38 trillion will be allocated over two phases for rehabilitation works this year.

"In the first phase, there is a proposed fund of Rp 2.17 trillion to be used by 539 working units at various levels," he said.

"Meanwhile, we are still discussing budgets for the second phase of Rp 1.21 trillion with the Finance Ministry."

Kaban has requested that regents come up with at least 10 percent of the rehabilitation fund needed for regencies.

"We need revitalization, capital injection and new technologies," the minister said.

"I have instructed the regents to channel the funds in a way that will cultivate the land more productively."

He said regents could use the fund in a variety of ways permitted by forestry laws and the rehabilitation blueprint.