Indonesia: Country Aims to Make Forestry More Sustainable
Copyright 2001 Environment and Energy Publishing, LLC Greenwire
December 4, 2001
Indonesia, which has 10 percent of the world's tropical forests, has announced it will toughen its forestry laws in order to crack down on illegal logging.
By 2003, logging companies will need to demonstrate sustainable forest management or they will be stripped of their licenses, the government said. And officials say they are putting legislation in place that would create an independent body to issue, evaluate and monitor license holders. The announcements follow an October move to ban log exports, the beginning of a campaign to cut rampant over-logging of the country's tropical rainforests.
Owner of more tropical forests than any country other than Brazil, Indonesia has seen its forest resources disappear at an unprecedented rate. In the past 15 years, more than half of Indonesia's forests were lost due to rampant illegal logging and related forest fires (CNN online, Dec. 4).