The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government has announced a Rp 4.2 trillion program aimed at encouraging people to participate in efforts to restore the country's forests and revitalize the forestry industry.
"Up to now, the public has been relegated to the role of spectator, but now communities will be able to actively participate in both forest conservation and the revitalization of the forestry industry," Forestry Minister MS Kaban said last week.
Indonesia has approximately 141 million hectares of forest, of which an estimated 95 million hectares have been set aside as production forests and conversion areas. The country is currently the ninth biggest pulp producer in the world.
The government plans to encourage people living near pulp factories to help develop production forests that will support the expansion of local pulp production, while discouraging the felling of trees in natural forests.
Currently, only two of the seven pulp firms in Indonesia, PT Musi Hutan Persada and PT Tanjung Enim Lestari, both in Sumatra, use their own production plantations to provide timber for pulp processing. All of the other companies use natural forest timber.
"People living within a maximum radius of 200 kilometers from a factory site will be trained to plant for forestry plantations," said Kaban.
The Forestry Ministry and Finance Ministry are in the process of establishing a general services body to support the implementation of the forestry plantation program among local communities.
Kaban said he expected Indonesia to become at least the third largest pulp producer in the world by 2009, through the expansion of forestry plantations from the current two to three million hectares to five million hectares.
The Forestry Ministry is targeting the establishment of one million hectares of new forestry plantations in 2007 alone. Kaban predicted that nine million hectares of forestry plantations would be available by 2014 if this new program was properly implemented.
Total pulp production for 2006 is expected to come in at 5.8 million tons, an increase of 7.4 percent from last year's 5.4 million tons.
As much as 45 percent of pulp produced in Indonesia and 35 percent of paper is exported.
Last year, Indonesia supplied 2.7 percent of the total global demand of 200 million tons of pulp and 2.5 percent of total global demand of 350 million tons of paper.
Global paper consumption is expected to rise to 490 million tons by 2020.
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