“Civil Society has been collecting and analyzing data about Sumatra’s forest loss for over a decade but has lacked an easy way to share them with the public... Sumatra has one of the world’s fastest rates of deforestation driven by global commodities markets and driving global climate change. These maps provide the desperately needed transparency on conservation values and drivers of their loss. We hope they will shed light on what is really happening to our spectacular tropical island and help save it.”
— Nazir Foead, Conservation Director, WWF Indonesia
www.eyesontheforest.or.id
The Indonesian government has declared that a report regarding the country’s loss of almost five million hectares of forest and peatlands since the implementation of a moratorium on deforestation is misleading.
“The report cannot be understood because it’s different from the forestry ministry’s record, which says the deforestation rate over the past few years has drastically decreased to around 500,000 hectares annually,” said Agus Purnomo, a presidential special aide on climate change on Monday. But Greenpeace adamantly claims that Indonesia is still losing forest lands at an alarming rate. “By May 2012, Indonesia could lose 4.9 million hectares of its forests and peatlands. With each revision of the forest moratorium, the acreage continues to decrease,” said Yuyun Indradi, political campaigner of Greenpeace in recent statement.
Agus Purnomo, however, cited a Forest Ministry’s report that Indonesia’s deforestation rate has decreased over the last 10 years. “We invite Greenpeace to explain its methodology used to determine the forest degradation in order to clarify the issue. Determining whether the figure is just imaginary or an accurate figure might lead to the correction of Indonesia’s deforestation rate,” Purnomo noted, adding that the dramatization of this issue could reinforce a lie.
