State of the forest: Indonesia

Joint report from Forest Watch Indonesia, World Resources Institute and Global Forest Watch. It provides a detailed analysis of the scale and pace of change affecting Indonesia’s forests. The report concludes that the doubling of deforestation rates in Indonesia is largely the result of a corrupt political and economic system that regards natural resources as a source of revenue to be exploited for political ends and personal gain. The political instability that followed the economic crises of 1997 and the eventual ousting of former President Suharto in 1998 further increased deforestation to its current level.

The key findings of the report are as follows:

• Indonesia is experiencing one of the highest rates of tropical forest loss in the world
• Deforestation in Indonesia is largely the result of a corrupt political and economic system that regarded natural resources, especially forests, as a source of revenue to be exploited for political ends and personal gain
• Illegal logging has reached epidemic proportions as a result of Indonesia's chronic structural imbalance between legal wood supply and demand
• More than 20 million hectares of forest have been cleared since 1985, but the majority of this land has not been put to productive alternative uses
• The Indonesian government is facing mounting pressure domestically and internationally to take action, but progress is slow and not all policy reforms in process are necessarily good news for forests

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Full document is available as a PDF (very large file) or Zipped PDF. Summary, key findings, and press pack are available from http://www.wri.org/forests/indoforest.html