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Countries Appendix INDONESIA (60.6%) Indonesia houses the most extensive rainforest cover in all of Asia, though it is rapidly developing these lands to accommodate its increasing population and growing economy. Indonesia is made up of an archipelago and the numerous islands support tremendous diversity and endemnicity of species. Indonesia spans two biogeographic realms: the Indomalayan and Australiasia; and seven biogeographic regions giving rise to numerous unique habitats. About 60% of Indonesia's 195 million hectares are forested. Indonesia's forests are increasingly threatened by logging, mining operations, shifting agriculture, cutting for fuelwood, and colonization. Rainforest cover has steadily declined since the 1960's when 82% of the country was covered with forest, to 68% in 1982, to 53% in 1995. The effects from forest loss have been widespread including irregular dry and flood river flow on once steady river systems. Pollution from chlorine bleach from pulp bleaching and run-off from mines is causing local wildlife die-offs and illness among local peoples. On the island of New Guinea (Irian Jaya) the world's only tropical glacier is receding in part due to mining and logging. Logging for tropical timbers and pulpwood (Sumatra's rainforest houses the world's largest pulp mill) is rapidly destroying Indonesia's forests and encroaching on the lands of indigenous peoples. Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of tropical timbers, generating upwards of US$5 billion annually and over 64 million hectares (one-third of Indonesia's land mass) are concessioned to commercial loggers. According to FAO, each year Indonesia loses more than 13.3 million acres (5.4 million ha) of tropical rainforest not including forest degraded by logging activities. Studies found that each year over 500,000 hectares of rainforest are logged illegally throughout Indonesia each year at a reported loss exceeding a billion dollars in export revenue to the government. In addition, another 700,000 hectares of forest are legally logged each year in Indonesia. Logging in Indonesia has opened some of the most remote, forbidding places on earth to development. After decimating much of the forests in less remote locations, timber firms have stepped up practices on the island of Borneo and the state of Irian Jaya on New Guinea, where great swaths of forests have been cleared in recent years and logging firms have to move deeper and deeper into the interior to find suitable trees. Whereas three years ago, only 7% of Indonesia's logging concessions were located in Irian Jaya, today 18% exist in the territory. Mining operations have a devastating effect on the forest and tribal peoples of Indonesia. The largest and best known of such projects is the Freeport mine in Irian Jaya, run by Freeport-McMoRan, a US multinational corporation based in New Orleans which also is the America's largest polluter, producing nearly three times as much toxic waste as America's next largest polluter. Freeport has operated the Mount Ertsberg gold, silver, and copper mine for over 20 years and since converted the mountain into a 600-meter hole. The rivers surrounding the mine are toxic, from the company's dumping of 120,000 tons of toxic wastes into them every day. The rainforest surrounding the rivers is dying and wildlife is on the decline. Agriculture, too, has been rendered unusable by contamination. In addition to environmental degradation, protests by local tribal peoples have been ruthlessly suppressed. According to human rights watchers, after a copper pipe was blown up by an Independence organization (Indonesia invaded Papua New Guinea in 1967 and annexed half the island, an area now known as Irian Jaya), the Indonesian military killed 900 to several thousand civilians. Human rights groups allege that violence, sponsored by Freeport, continues against natives today and a Christmas Day demonstration was savagely put down with 37 deaths, 22 of which were civilians. In addition to killing, there are eye-witness accounts of tribal leaders being taken away in Freeport vehicles and tortured by the military. The future of mining in Irian Jaya looks grim as Freeport has announced a 2.6 million hectares of forest on the island's Central Ranges. However a $6 billion lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Papuans against Freeport's mining pollution. Indonesia's poor environmental record may hurt its pocket as a recent mandate by the international trade community forces It to implement eco-labeling before the end of the century. If Indonesia does not clean up its environmental actions, it will be unable to label its products ecologically sound and may be discriminated against in the international marketplace. In Indonesia there has been a rapid growth of a middle-class seeking Western goals and lifestyles, but lacking any sort of political force. In other Asian countries like Thailand, the Philippines, and Korea, middle class revolts have shifted policies toward democracy and away from military-run dictatorships. This is not the case in Indonesia where the military still control politics amid widespread accusations of human rights abuses. It appears that middle class Indonesians are more concerned with protecting their own economic well-being than challenging the authoritarian government. Indonesia has began to exploit the tourist industry, but appears to be heading away from "eco-tourism" towards over-exploitive tourism. In late 1997, forest fires raged out of control in the rainforests of Sumatra and Kalimantan (Borneo) causing crop losses, airport closures, hospitalizations, and serious air pollution. An unusually strong El Niño caused droughts, made worse by deforestation and forest degradation which dried out the rainforests, allowed fires set by plantation owners and local people to spread. The severe drought, coupled with erosion from deforestation, caused rivers and reservoirs to run dry, and forced mining operations to a standstill. The fires of 1997 and 1998 brought Indonesia's severe environmental degradation to the headlines. Estimates of the area affected by fires in 1997 range from government estimates of 1.85 million acres (750,000 ha) to environmental groups' projections of 4.2 million acres (1.714 million ha), while another 390,000-970,000 acres (157,460-393,850 ha) of forest burned in the first three-and-one-half months of 1998. Regardless of the actual numbers, the fires caused vast economic, political, social, health, and ecological damage to Indonesia and the neighboring Southeast Asian nations of Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and Thailand in the midst of an economic crisis. The economic loss from the fires during 1997 to Indonesia was $1.012 billion accounting for only losses from falls in short-term health, fishing, tourism, and industrial production. In Indonesia clearcutting virgin rainforest is illegal, but land clearing is permissible as long as the process is declared to be the first step in establishing a plantation, usually of oil palm or rubber. Indonesia's goal for the year 2000 is to overtake Malaysia as the world's number one producer of palm oil and plans to have 5.5 million hectares of oil palm plantations, double its current area. The fastest and cheapest way to clear new land for plantations is by burning. Every year hundreds of thousands of acres (hectares) goes up in smoke before monsoon rains arrive to put out the fires. However in El Niño years, monsoon rains can be delayed for months allowing fires to rage out of control. In 1982-83, one of the strongest El Niño events on record, more than 9.1 million acres (3.7 million ha) burned on the island of Borneo before monsoon rains arrived. In 1997, another strong el Niño year, the same thing happened. Fires set by plantation owners to clear logged over forest and scrubland raged and produced a deadly haze that spread as far west as Sri Lanka until monsoon rains finally arrived in November. The Indonesian military government, headed by the ageing president Suharto, played an important role in the outbreak and continuation of the fires. Strong political ties and business links between ex-president Suharto and the economic elite which includes plantation and logging concession owners have stifled reforms that would help prevent such fires. Laws go unenforced and no timber barons or plantation owners have ever been convicted under the 1995 law that prohibits the deliberate setting of fires for land clearing despite their role in starting the fires. This year there is irrefutable proof that plantation and concession owners were responsible for as much as 80% of the fires. Satellite pictures clearly show fires originating on logging concessions and plantations. The Environmental minister tracked the satellite photos to 29 companies and revoked 144 licenses on October 3, 1997. But, by December the government had already reinstated 44 licenses and most expect that the bulk of the remaining licenses will also be reinstated. The reinstatement of licenses does not come as much of a surprise since in 1996, 60 logging companies continued their operations despite not having their licenses renewed due to poor land management. The Indonesian government also contributed to the fires by its misguided transmigration program which moves peasants from the crowded central islands to the less populated outer islands. Since the program was initiated two decades ago, more than six million migrants have been relocated to Kalimantan, Irian Jaya, Sulawesi, and Sumatra. In 1995, Suharto initiated the "One Million Hectare Project," an ambitious project to move 300,000 families from Java to central Kalimantan and increase rice production by 2.7 million tons per year. The government began clearing the forest and draining the peat swamps to create a giant rice paddy. In the clearing process, fires are set to burn vegetation. The problem is that once peat is ignited it is very difficult to extinguish and can burn for years, even decades. To compound matters the dry conditions of El Niño in 1997 allowed the fires to spread beyond the project and move into logged over and primary forest. Even if the peat fires are extinguished, there is no guarantee of success since agricultural experts say that peat swamps are unsuitable for rice cultivation. Even after the monsoon rains arrive and the majority of fires are extinguished, scientists say that Indonesia can expect more problems from increased flooding, acid rain, and massive erosion. Health experts warn that the fires may have long term health affects, while WWF estimates that in the first six months, the fires released as much carbon dioxide as the entire annual contribution from cars Western Europe. The fires may have some positive effects. Besides highlighting Indonesia's ecological woes, the government's treatment of the fires demonstrated the lack of transparency in national financing that helped lead to the financial crisis by masking the extent of economic problems. According to the IMF's managing director, Indonesia was unable to use its special off-budget reforestation fund to help combat the fires because the money had been ear-marked for a car project. Though the fund contained billions drawn from timber taxes, its has long been used as a convenient way to distribute wealth back to Indonesia's circle of economic elite, the bedfellows of former president Suharto. The IMF says that the fund has mostly been used to provide low interest loans to commercial timber and plantation companies for land clearing and replanting virgin rainforest with fast growing pine, eucalyptus, and acacia trees for pulp production. . . . . . For current information I highly recommend trying the CIA and FAO links below. |
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