Jakarta – Indonesian deforestation has been so severe it would take 120 years to regain the 60 million hectares of lost forests, Forestry Minister M.S. Kaban says.
Kaban said in Padang, West Sumatra, on Saturday that 60 million hectares of pristine forests had been lost over the past 20 years due to over-exploitation, land conversion, natural disasters and forest fires.
The government's reforestation efforts could only recover about 600,000 hectares per year, he said, meaning that full regrowth would take between 100 and 120 years.
"But if deforestation continues at the current rate, the recovery time will be even longer," he said, adding that the reforestation program cost Rp 3 trillion (about US$330 million) annually.
Indonesia is one of the world's most heavily forested countries with about 130 million hectares of forest land.
However, the country also has the world's worst deforestation rate at 2.8 million hectares a year, causing state losses of some US$5 billion. The most common problems are rampant illegal logging, forest fires and land conversion for giant plantations and mining operations.
Kaban, who chairs the Crescent Star Party (PBB), said he was disheartened by the fact that many major illegal loggers were arrested only to be acquitted by courts. "They always escape justice, while the government takes the blame," he said.
Aside from causing state losses, the timber barons and financiers of illegal logging are impoverishing people who live in close proximity to forests.
"People who live in areas that have become centers of illegal logging mostly become poor," he said. "Meanwhile, the barons are enjoying their holidays in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia," he added, referring to countries widely alleged to be transportation hubs for Indonesia's illegally felled timber.
He said that local people who worked for loggers might receive up to Rp 2 million for helping cut down some of the precious old trees near their homes. "They also live in constant fear of arrest," he said.
More than a dozen financial backers arrested by the government for involvement in illegal logging last year were all acquitted by the courts due to "lack of evidence". Hundreds of people across the country have also been arrested by police and forest rangers for illegal logging.
"I've met some of them. They had to leave their wives and children to work deep inside the forest, where they are ravaged by mosquitoes and at constant risk of arrest," Kaban said. He was referring to illegal loggers in Kalimantan and Papua, from where much of the some 10 million cubic meters of timber smuggled out of the country annually comes from.