Indonesian Forests: the Endangered Beauty

Dayak Pitap indigenous community in South Kalimantan are forest dwellers

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.

What is WALHI doing?

An immediate moratorium on all industrial logging in Indonesia is crucial, until the Indonesian government can show that an environmentally and sustainable forestry industry can be established. WALHI is calling on the Indonesian Government to recognize and respect indigenous peoples’ rights to their customary lands, to reduce overcapacity in the wood processing industry and to make strenuous efforts to fight corruption in the forestry sector.

In line with this, WALHI is calling for an international boycott on Indonesian wood products until fundamental reforms are implemented.

WALHI is also:

• Working to stop Indonesia’s forests being destroyed for cash-crop plantations like oil palm.
• Working with local communities to promote alternatives to industrial scale destructive logging, like community based conservation and community based forest management.
• Calling on the Government of Indonesia to protect important forest areas from industrial development, where indigenous peoples are in agreement, so that Indonesia’s enormous diversity of plant and animal species can continue to exist into the future.

Read on to our forest campaign subtopics :

• Illegal and destructive logging
• Conservation areas and conflict
• Forest Destruction for Plantations
• Managing the forests with communities
• Cleaning up the timber industry

source: Walhi