Why are forests in Indonesia being destroyed?

Drivers of Indonesia’s Deforestation Indonesia’s irreplaceable rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands are being destroyed to make products we use—and throw away—every day. Products like paper for our magazines, toilet paper, packaging, and palm oil for toothpaste and chocolate are fueling the destruction.

Why are 80% of Indonesia’s rainforests being destroyed?

More than 80 percent of the Indonesian rainforest, mangroves and peatlands most vulnerable to being cleared for palm oil production is completely unprotected by the country’s Forest Moratorium, according to new research.

How much deforestation happened in Indonesia?

There were 289,016 deforestation alerts reported in Indonesia between 7th of June 2022 and 14th of June 2022, covering a total of 3.56kha of which none were high confidence alerts detected by a single system and none were alerts detected by multiple systems.

Where is the most deforestation happening in Indonesia?

This deforestation predominantly occurred on the large islands of Sumatra (47% of national deforestation) and Kalimantan (40% of national deforestation) (Margono et al 2014).

Is deforestation increasing in Indonesia?

Indonesia’s deforestation rate hit a historic low in 2020, with the government crediting its policies, including its social forestry policy, as well as its prohibition of forest clearing.

Why does Indonesia burn trees?

Environmental groups argue that Indonesia’s forest fires are a man-made crisis driven largely by corporate greed and weak law enforcement. In Indonesia, stronger environmental safeguards are needed together with greater accountability when companies raze forests and drain peatlands, leaving them vulnerable to fires.

What is Indonesia doing to prevent deforestation?

Instead of zero deforestation, Indonesia has opted to rehabilitate forests and peatland in a bid to absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that is released by deforestation, a strategy dubbed forestry and land use net carbon sink.

Is deforestation slowing in Indonesia?

How did Indonesia reduce deforestation?

What is the reason why burning of forest are taking place in Indonesia and Malaysia?

Global climate change that has caused the prolonged drought in Indonesia is one of the factors triggering land and forest fires. Basically, land and forest fires are not natural disasters because 99% of incidents in Indonesia are caused by human factors, either deliberately or negligently.

Is deforestation an issue in Indonesia?

Even despite a moratorium on new logging contracts imposed in 2010, the rate of deforestation continued to increase to an estimated 840,000 hectares in 2012, surpassing deforestation in Brazil. Deforestation in Indonesia peaked in 2016, and thereafter declined, falling by about 30% (comparing 2009–2016 with 2017–2019).

What was the cause of large forest fire of Indonesia in 1997 98?

All the fires of 1997-1998 were human-caused. The majority of the fires were due to land speculation and large-scale forest conversion as a result of inadequate and unenforced land use policies. In addition, fires in settlement/transmigration areas were caused by land use conflicts, carelessness or hunting.

What caused fires in Indonesia?

JAKARTA — In 2019, fires raged through Indonesia’s rainforests and peatlands, sparked by the deliberate burning of land for agriculture, and fanned by an El Niño system bringing drier-than-usual weather conditions.

What eventually stopped the fires that burned out of control in 1997 in Southeast Asia *?

During the first nine months of 1997, the government approved 750,000 acres (300,000 ha) of primary rainforest for conversion to palm-oil plantations. The fires set for forest clearing burn every year, but are usually extinguished by monsoon rains that once fell predictably every November.

What area of peatlands were burned in the Indonesian fires of 1997?

The Indonesian province of East Kalimantan was the area most severely affected by the fires. Burned area is estimated at 5.2 million ha for 1997-1998, about 25 percent of the entire province (Hoffmann et al.

Is Indonesia still burning forest?

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s land and forest fires burned a greater area this year than in 2020, with most of the fires occurring in West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, two provinces that were until recently not major sites of burning.

Which year had the most forest fires in Asia?

These fires may have been the largest in human history. In 1987, another 5 million acres (2 million ha) of forest, 70 percent of which was primary forest, went up in smoke in Kalimantan, Sumatra, East Timor, Sulawesi, and Java. In 1991, fires burned more than 125,000 acres (50,000 ha) of forest.

When did deforestation start in Indonesia?

Palm oil – a key driver of deforestation in the 2000’s In the period of 2001 to 2019 expansion of oil palm plantations contributed almost one third to total forest conversion. Particularly between 2005 and 2012 large-scale oil palm plantations were responsible for most of the area of deforestation.

What is the main resource behind deforestation in Indonesia?

Our analysis of tree cover loss within Indonesia’s primary forests and legal boundaries for oil palm, fiber, mining and selective logging concessions from 2000 to 2015 showed that approximately 55 percent of forest loss (more than 4.5 million hectares or more than 11 million acres) occurred inside concessions.

What is happening to the forest in Indonesia?

Large areas of forest in Indonesia have been cleared by large multinational pulp companies, such as Asia Pulp and Paper, and replaced by plantations. Forests are often burned by farmers and plantation owners.

Is Indonesia’s deforestation rate increasing or decreasing?

As late as 1900, Indonesia was still a densely forested country: forests represented 84 percent of the total land area. Deforestation intensified in the 1970s and has accelerated further since then.

What caused the 1997–98 Indonesian drought and forest fires?

At the time of this transition in 1997 and 1998, Indonesia suffered a severe drought, failed rice harvest, and some of the largest forest fires in 50 years that burned forests in Kalimantan and Sumatra, all attributed to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event ( Barber and Schweithelm, 2000, Wulan et al., 2004 ).

What is the total forest cover in Indonesia?

The forest cover by that time is estimated to 145 million ha (hectares) of primary forest and another 14 million ha (hectares) of secondary and tidal forest. In the early 1970s Indonesia used this valuable resource to its economic benefit with the development of the country’s wood-processing industries.