The next edition of the Guinness Book of World Records will list Indonesia as the country with the fastest rate of forest destruction on the planet.
The environmental group Greenpeace says Indonesia is destroying an area of forest equivalent to 300 football pitches every hour. It has already lost 72 percent of its large intact ancient forests and half of what remains is threatened.
Guinness World Records, considered a global authority on record-breaking achievements, has confirmed to Greenpeace that this unfortunate record will feature in its 2008 record book to be published in September this year.
It will read: “Of the 44 countries which collectively account for 90 percent of the world’s forests, the country which pursues the world’s highest annual rate of deforestation is Indonesia with 1.8 million ha (4,447,896 acres) per year between 2000-2005 – a rate of 2 per cent annually or 51 square km (20 square miles) every day.”
The record breaker was announced as the international community are considering reduced or avoided deforestation to mitigate climate change at the Third working group meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change taking place in Bangkok. Up to 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical forest clearance.
Indonesia’s forests cover over 120 million hectares but the forestry sector is plagued by lawlessness, corruption and forest plunder, which the Indonesian Government is failing to control. International demand for timber and paper, as well as commodities such as palm oil, is driving this destruction.
Greenpeace is calling on the Indonesian Government to stem the tide of forest destruction and to reduce its contribution to climate change by imposing a moratorium on commercial logging operations in its rainforests. Greenpeace also says that countries must ban the import of forest products that come from illegal or destructive sources.
Indonesia needs help from other country to save the forest. And you can blame Indonesia but participate to how to deal with this problem. Besides there are illegal logging in Indonesia – this is surely bad. We have to know the reason why it happened? Then help Indonesia to solve the problem.
Wayan: I am certainly agree.
Dear Friends and Associates,
In an attempt to regenerate awareness towards the island of Bali, ABL has recently created a web-log (commonly known as blog) – http://blog.baliwww.com
The main function of this web-log is that it can be viewed daily like an on-line journal and anyone can post opinions, questions, messages and general information for the benefit of those who have business or travel interests in Bali.
In order for us to create a concise data-base about what is happening around Bali, ABL would like to invite you to submit Articles of your travel experiences, Art and culture, Music, Dance, Press Releases, Special Events regarding your property, which will then appear under each category of the web-log.
Please feel free to view the ‘blog’ at your leisure and contact us if you have any feedback on issues of how we can work together to promote and preserve Bali as a quality holiday destination.
Yours sincerely,
http://baliwww.com
ABL TEAM
Hi!
Its a sad day for the orangutan habitat – I do not see a way forward for these great men of the forest – if this is allowed to continue unchecked.
If this is happening at the fastest rate, Indenonsia should also become the fastest restorers of forests.
aku bangga dengan Indonesia….
bukan cm bnyk hutan yang hancur….
tapi juga pembajak no.1….
im not proud of this……. they did this because another country needs our forest. we have no choice cos its not our ppl who destroy it but its ‘them’