Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Legalized Deforestration

One of the reason why the process of Deforestation in Indonesia is going on very rapidly is because the government has been inconsistent in making policy.

For example, in 2005 the Minister of Forestry issued a decree that allocated 3,742,120 Hectare of land in North Sumatera specially for Forest Area.

However, when a new Minister of Forestry was appointed on 21 October 2009, Kompas reported that one of the agenda during his first 100 days in office is to revise 564,200 Hectare of that Forest Area into Non Forest Area.

Considering that our forest area is getting more and more smaller every year, I hope that the government would be more consistent in making forestry policies, and avoid changing forest regulations.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I may have mentioned once before working in Port Klang in Malaysia and seeing the barges coming in daily from Kalimantan with massive trees of teak and other hardwoods; great wide girth trees that represented hundreds of years growth. That was in 1994-95/6. I hope the trade has diminished since then but somehow I am doubtful. The satellite imagery would be good but then someone has to enforce the law.

Unknown said...

Duckham,

Yes I remember. According to the media illegal logging is getting worst after those years.
The key to all that is serious & constant law enforcement, otherwise the satellite would be useless.