VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

VOINews, Jakarta - The Ministry of Environment and Forestry has registered a decline in deforested area in Indonesia in 2021–2022.

Acting Director General of Forestry Planning and Environmental Management at the ministry Ruandha A. Sugardiman said that during the period, the area under deforested land was 104 thousand hectares.

At a media briefing here on Monday, he informed that the figure was obtained based on the gross deforestation area of 119.4 thousand hectares minus the reforestation area of 15.4 thousand hectares.

According to him, the figure for deforestation in 2021–2022 was 8.4 percent lower compared to the figure for 2020–2021.

He further said that in 2020–2021, the deforested area reached 113.5 thousand hectares. The figure was obtained based on a gross deforestation area of 139.1 thousand hectares minus the reforestation area of 25.6 thousand hectares.

"The decline in Indonesian forests is relatively low and tends to be stable," he observed.

Based on the gross deforestation data from 2021–2022, deforestation mainly occurred in secondary forests.

Deforestation occurred in an area of 106.4 thousand hectares or 89.1 percent of the secondary forest area, of which 70.9 percent or 75.4 thousand hectares were inside forest areas.

Regarding the conditions of land and tree cover in Indonesia, he noted changes in forest cover from time to time.

According to him, changes in land and forest cover are caused by, among other things, the conversion of land for non-forestry sector development, logging, and forest fires, as well as forest rehabilitation activities.

"To find out the existence and extent of land cover, both forested and non-forested lands, we conduct forest and deforestation monitoring every year," he informed.

The monitoring is carried out over 187 million hectares of land area in Indonesia, both inside forest areas and outside them.

The result of the monitoring in 2022 showed that there were 96 million hectares of forested land, accounting for 51.2 percent of Indonesia's total land area.

The monitoring result also showed that 88.3 million hectares or 92 percent of forested land is located inside the forest area.

The ministry's Director of Inventory and Monitoring of Forest Resources Belinda A. Margono said the results of forest and deforestation monitoring in Indonesia can be viewed and downloaded from the website http://sigap.menlhk.go.id and https://nfms.menlhk.go.id/.  (Antaranews)