Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Indonesia is set to enter the Guinness Book of World Records, but it is not an achievement the country will want to brag about.
Guinness has agreed to a proposal by Greenpeace to cite Indonesia in its 2008 issue, to be published in September, for the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000 and 2005.
An area of forest equal to 300 soccer fields is being destroyed every hour in the country.
The citation in the publication will read: "Of the 44 countries which collectively account for 90 percent of the world's forests, the country which pursues the highest annual rate of deforestation is Indonesia with 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of forest destroyed each year between 2000-2005."
That figure is still lower than the Forestry Ministry's estimate of 2.8 million hectares of forest lost annually.
Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigner Hapsoro said Thursday a temporary ban on commercial logging in natural forests, a full-blown reforestation effort and stricter law enforcement to stop illegal logging were necessary to halt this worrying trend.
Indonesia is estimated to have lost 72 percent of its approximately 123.35 million hectares of ancient forests, and half of what remains is threatened by commercial logging, frequent forest fires and land clearance for palm oil plantations.
While the Forestry Ministry and the State Ministry for the Environment have vowed a massive reforestation program, green activists say such efforts will be useless as long as the government continues to approve new forest concessions for industrial purposes.
Indonesia is a key exporter of timber, paper and palm oil to China, Japan, South Korea and a number of European nations.
Greenpeace also said frequent fires in Indonesia's peatland, resulting in the release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide, have made the country the third-largest greenhouse gas polluter after the U.S. and China.
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