Indonesian Minister of Forestry: Oil palm plantation not in forest sector
26 February 2010
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Oil palm plantation not in forest sector: Govt
Adianto P. Simamora , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 02/23/2010 10:55 AM | National
Forestry
Minister Zulkifli Hasan said he had no plan to draft a decree aimed at
including oil palm plantations in the forestry sector.
"I don't
know about it. There won't be any forest conversion into oil palm
plantations," he said Monday on the side of a hearing with the House of
Representatives' Commission IV on forestry and agriculture.
Zulkifli said the expansion of oil palm plantations would only be allowed on idle lands.
"If
you ask me about forest conversion into oil palm estates, it is not
now. We are still focusing to [examine land] on reaching
self-sufficiency on sugar cane," he said.
A source at the
ministry said the draft of the decree on the palm oil issue had been
finished and was likely to be discussed this month before being
approved by the minister.
The ministry's head of research and
development Tachrir Fathoni had said the draft would include oil palm
plantations into forest, which had been applied by a number of
countries including Malaysia.
He dismissed fears that the draft would lead to forest conversions.
Malaysia,
the second largest producers of palm oil after Indonesia, uses the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) standard to identify the forest
- which is land with tree crown cover of more than 10 percent and an
area of more than 0.5 hectares with trees reaching a minimum height of
five meters.
The 1999 law on forest defines the forests as an
integrated ecosystem in the form of land comprising biological
resources, dominated by trees in natural forms and the surrounding
environment, and which cannot be separated from each other.
Executive
director of Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi) Berry Furgon warned
that the government should follow the definition of forest as stated in
the law.
"The draft shows the government has no will to protect
the forest. They must amend the 1999 law on forestry if the government
wants to apply standards from the FAO."
He said the draft would only legalize deforestation in the country.
Indonesia
has 137 million hectares of forest but the deforestation rate has
reached over one million hectares per year due to illegal logging and
forest conversion including for oil palm plantations.
The
Agriculture Ministry said last week it planned to use 1.8 million
hectares of land designated as industrial forests (HTI) for oil palm
plantations.
Agriculture Minister Suswono said that of 9.7
million hectares of land available for oil palm plantations, 7.9
million hectares was already developed, leaving the 1.8 million
hectares designated as HTI.
Executive director of the Greenomics
Indonesia, Elfian Effendi said Indonesia has no reason to be proud as
the world's largest producer of palm oil since hundreds of oil palm
plantations operating in forest zones were illegal.
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