Indonesia plants trees ahead of Bali conference
Indonesia, which has been losing its forests at a rapid pace in recent years, has launched a campaign to plant 79 million trees ahead of next month’s UN climate change conference in Bali.
“We have been negligent in the past, now we have to get our act together,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said to state news agency Antara, adding he had planted saplings on the outskirts of Jakarta.
The drive is part of a global campaign to plant one billion trees launched at UN climate change talks in Nairobi last year.
Forestry ministry officials said 79 million saplings were collected from local governments around the archipelago and they planned to complete the planting in one day.
Participants from 189 countries are expected to gather in Bali in next month to discuss a new deal to fight global warming. The existing pact, the Kyoto Protocol, runs out in 2012.
Fastest deforestation pace
According to Greenpeace, Indonesia had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches destroyed every hour.
Mr Yudhoyono said that illegal loggers and their financers were “common enemies” and must be brought to justice.
South-East Asia’s biggest economy is also among the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters because of deforestation, peatland degradation, and forest fires, according to a recent report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain’s development arm.
Environmental groups are concerned that rapidly expanding palm oil plantations, partly driven by ambitious plans for biofuels, are damaging the country’s rainforests.
One billion trees planted across the world
Meanwhile, the UN says the world has surpassed a United Nations goal of planting one billion trees in 2007 to help slow climate change, led by huge forestry projects in Ethiopia and Mexico.
The global tree-planting drive, inspired by Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, is meant to counter deforestation from logging and the burning of forests to create farmland.
Ethiopia and Mexico lead the way
UNEP said Ethiopia appeared to be the runaway leader with 700 million trees planted in a national reforestation drive. Only three per cent of Ethiopia is now forested, down from 40 per cent centuries ago.
Other top planters were Mexico with 217 million trees, Turkey 150 million, Kenya 100 million, Cuba 96.5 million, Rwanda 50 million, South Korea 43 million, Tunisia 21 million, Morocco 20 million, Burma 20 million and Brazil 16 million, it said.
The billion-tree target was set in Nairobi in November despite criticism that it would be impossible to verify. It was declared passed less than a week before the start of a December 3-14 meeting of the world’s environment ministers in Bali.
“You responded beyond our dreams,” said Maathai. “Now we must keep the pressure on and continue the good work for the planet. Plant another tree today in celebration.”
China, Guatemala and Spain were expected soon to announce new plantings of millions of trees, UNEP said.
UNEP says it checks planting pledges, which now cover 1.5 billion trees, to see if they sound credible but does not ensure all are planted. It said the totals were still being collated.
Source: SBS staff with agencies
29 November, 2007
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