World Bank urges Indonesia to act fast on forests

Jakarta, Feb 22: Indonesia should act fast to better manage its rich forests to help reduce poverty and rural development, the World Bank said, adding the likelihood of success is higher now than before.

Forests account for 70 percent of the country's land but play a weak role in the country's poverty reduction, economic and social development and environmental sustainability due to a lack of effective management, the World Bank report said yesterday.

It said more than 1 billion dollars has been invested in development assistance to the Indonesian forestry sector in the past two decades by more than 40 creditors, including the World Bank, but management continues to be weak and forest continues to be lost.

''Indonesia's forest sector has been in crisis for some time, yet many of us believe that the likelihood of successful outcomes is higher now than any time in the past,'' said the report.

The World Bank said the optimism was partly due to political reforms in the world's fourth-most-populous country since the fall of autocrat Suharto in 1998, which has led to pressure for officials to improve governance in the forestry sector.

Over 25 million hectares of forest estate, an area the size of Great Britain, no longer has trees, the report said. The state claims 127 million hectares of land as forest areas.

Separately, a group of foreign and local non-government organisations (NGOs) said they remained pessimistic on Indonesia's forests and that the Bank itself was lending support to some programmes such as industrial timber plantations that in themselves had been linked to deforestation.

''We do not see substantial positive change in terms of illegal logging, corruption and human rights in Indonesia's forestry sector,'' Stephanie Fried of US-based Environmental Defense was quoted as saying in the statement issued by NGOs from Indonesia, the United States and the Netherlands.

Reuters