Ari Rikin, Bogor – Despite the huge benefit of biological resources for human civilization, awareness and knowledge by the Indonesian public of the country's vast bioresources remains low, according to the Indonesia Institute of Sciences, or LIPI.

Such low public awareness would put Indonesia at risk to exploitation of its bioresources (SDH) by foreign researchers, LIPI warned.

"We should be grateful to have been blessed with such vast bioresources. However, we can't avoid the globalization process that would risk our SDH to become depleted because of environmental damages and because of overexploitation of the fauna, wild flora," said LIPI chairman Lukman Hakim during the Bioresources LIPI Expo in Bogor on Wednesday.

Benyamin Lakitan, an advisor to the Assessment and Application of Technology Ministry, said that current research permits on SDH are dominated by foreign researchers and that it would be ironic to discover whether foreign researchers understand more about Indonesia's bioresources than local researchers.

Indonesia also has vast resources that come from a variety of organisms.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/lipi-warns-indonesias-bioresources-risk-excessive-exploitation/