PRESIDENT WANTS 4 BLN TREES PLANTED BY 2020 By Fardah

     Jakarta, Dec. 9, 2009 (ANTARA) - The hazardous impacts of the Climate Change are real in Indonesia, and therefore the nation needs to take concrete action to address its environmental problems.

        "Many Indonesian farmers are unable to set the exact time for planting new seedlings because their predictions of the rainy season often fail," Giorgio Budi, Coordinator of the Civil Society Forum (CSF) for Climate Justice said recently.

        The changes in the pattern of season shifts, the length of time and the amount of rainfall had also affected fishermen, the life of animals and vegetation, Giorgio said in a seminar themed "Struggle for Safety in the Central Climate Change", in Jakarta, November 2, 2009.

        And a strategy the government has prepared particularly since 2007 to curb the climate change impacts, is by planting trees in massive numbers.

        President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when observing the Indonesian Planting Day and the 2009 National Planting Month at Cimerang village, Padalarang, Bandung, West Java, Tuesday (Dec. 8), urged communities to help prevent climate change hazards and repair the environment by planting trees.

        He asked the nation to plant 4 billion trees by 2020 and 9.2 billion trees by 2050.

        The country would make a significant contribution to the efforts to deal with climate change if the targets could be achieved, the head of state said.

        "If we can achieve half of the target, the trees can absorb 46 billion carbon by 2050. The figure is indeed pessimistic, but we could plant more trees, much more CO2 could be captured, and this will become our contribution to the world," the president said.

        President Yudhoyono reminded that since the Dutch colonial era, Indonesia's forests had been damaged and after the country's independence, the nation was also poor in managing the forests.

        Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan on the occasion said the One Man, One Tree (OMOT) program had so far managed to plant a total of 158 million trees of its target of 230 million.

        The forestry ministry set a target of rehabilitating 500,000 hectares of forest areas annually starting next year. The ministry also planned to rehabilitate 13 river basin areas throughout the country, the minister said.

        The forestry ministry's Rehabilitation Director General Indriastuti said her office would need Rp3 trillion to implement the program of rehabilitating 500,000 ha areas.

        The ministry would invite the private sector to join the program by 'adopting' trees that would be planted, in order to raise more funds as the available funds for the program currently was just Rp644 billion.

        Since the Yudhoyono administration has launched nation-wide tree planting movement in 2007, more than 280 million trees have been planted.

        From the Simultaneous Tree Planting Action and the Women's Movement of Tree planting, some 86,989,425 trees were planted in 2007, from the plan of 79 million, and in 2008 a total of 108,947,048 trees were planted throughout the country, from the original target of 100 million trees, according to information from the forestry ministry.

        From the Women's Movement of Tree Planting and Caring, some 14,142,505 trees were planted from its plan of 10 million trees in 2007, and in 2008, a total of 5,157,538 trees were planted from the earlier target of five million trees.

        Based on the forestry ministry's existing written data, around 48 million trees were planted in 2009, in addition to an estimation of 30 million trees voluntarily planted by the communities which had not yet been reported to the ministry.

        Last December 2, 2009, First Lady Ani Bambang Yudhoyono planted a number of trees to mark the launching of a "Women's Tree Planting and Caring Movement 2009 for Water Conservation,"

        Mrs. Ani Yudhoyono and members of some women's organizations planted 1,150 trees such a breadfruit and mango trees and sowed 30,000 fresh water milkfish fingerings at Cikaret, West Java.

        In 2007, the Movement themed "Climate Change" managed to plant more than 15 million trees. In 2008, over 17 million trees such as breadfruit and coconut trees, were planted and some 42 million fresh water fingerlings were distributed throughout Indonesia.

        First Lady Kristiani Herrawati Bambang Yudhoyono won a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) award for her efforts in encouraging Indonesian women to plant the 10 million trees simultaneously across the country in 2007.

        Indonesia is home to over 230 million people and to the world's third largest tropical forests after Brazil and Congo. The country's forests are habitats to various flora and fauna species including rare ones such as orangutans and tigers.

        However, environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) often blamed the country as the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouses gases after the US and China, due to rampant logging and burning of country's forests.

        A number of domestic as well as international NGOs such as WALHI (Indonesian Environmental Forum) and Greenpeace have repeatedly urged the Indonesian government to declare a logging moratorium in order to save the remaining forests.

        Tree planting movements are necessary and important, but of more crucial importance are the protection and preservation of the remaining forests. ***3*** (f001/A/HAJM/15:55/f001) (T.F001/A/F001/A/F001) 09-12-2009 16:09:26