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Indonesia lags behind in commitment to restoration
What’s the relevance of the Bonn Challenge to current government policy?
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Haze emerges from fires ravaging peatland in Meranti Islands regency in Riau province. The government aims to restore 2.49 hectares of destroyed peatland.
(Courtesy of Emergency Task Force for Forest Fire/Riau)
I
ndonesia hosted the first Asia roundtable of the Bonn Challenge on May 9 and 10 in Palembang, South Sumatra. The meeting was organized by the Environment and Forestry Ministry, and the South Sumatra administration with a global NGO, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
It was indeed a strategic role played by Indonesia to show to the world that Indonesia is also committed to supporting global restoration efforts.
The Bonn Challenge is a global movement launched in 2011 through a high-level event hosted by the German Environment Ministry and the IUCN in Bonn, Germany. The important objective of the initiatives is to restore 150 million hectares, landscape level deforested and degraded land by 2020, and 350 million ha by 2030.
The good news is that four countries pledged commitment by May 12; a major milestone with a total of 150.03 million ha comprising 0.75 million ha by Bangladesh, 0.6 million ha by Mongolia, 0.1 million ha by Pakistan and 0.2 million ha by Sri Lanka.
This ambitious program responds to the dramatic decline of land productivity and to combat global climate change. The Bonn Challenge was initiated as an integrated concept to restore deforested and degraded land, not just for environmental benefits but more importantly to generate economic benefits up to US$170 billion through community livelihood improvement watershed protection and improved crop production.
This initiative is indeed important as part of global movement to save Earth from immediate global environmental disaster. As the climate change impact is clear, collective effort from all governments in the world is a must.
In less than seven years the Bonn Challenge managed to attract commitment from 34 countries and nine global forest companies to pledge restoration of deforested and degraded land of up to 148 million ha.
