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ndonesia leads the world in biodiversity, animals and plants, vies with Brazil, but is found as having more diverse coral reefs. Indonesia, Brazil, Colombia and Zaire are the four richest countries of mega-diversity. Indonesia is number one.

As the sixth largest country, it occupies only 1.3 percent of the world's land surface, but has roughly 12 percent of the world's mammals, 16 percent of the world's reptiles and amphibians and 17 percent of the world's birds, 25 percent of fish and each year it finds more.

Suffice to say that Indonesia is unquestionably one of the top two countries for biodiversity, the richest country in the world in terms of biological wealth, and the leader in marine biodiversity.

Indonesia's responsibility to protect this biodiversity is challenged by the size of the task to catalogue and then protect all species on more than 17,000 islands.

In addition; shortsighted economic planning and inappropriate land use have led to severe ecological degradation, and significant environmental and economic problems.

Large-scale forest fires, landslides, poor water quality, loss of topsoil, and desertification are just a few of the environmental disasters brought about through poor land use and development activity.

Hunting, habitat loss and population pressure are some of the factors that have accelerated the rate of transformation.

Indonesia holds a grim record as having the largest number of vertebrate species under threat of extinction (128 species of mammals and 104 species of birds).

The most spectacular creatures that have already been lost such as the Balinese and Javanese subspecies of tiger. Unfortunately, the list is likely to increase in the future if strong conservation action is not taken soon.

Recognizing the need to conserve its rich biological diversity and our commitment to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the Indonesian government has made a commitment to protect 10 percent of the country's land area by 2010, and eventually, some 200,000 square kilometers of coastal and marine habitats will be set-aside as conservation areas by 2012.

This commitment has been met with more protected areas being established in both forest and marine ecosystems.

Our achievement to protect nature is not only because global interest in biodiversity has stimulated direct international investments in conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, but also our communities throughout the archipelago draw food, freshwater, medicine, fiber and fuel from forest, wetland, and marine ecosystems.

That benefit will be remembered by our nation and it was until Jan. 22, for the first time ever, this archipelagic nation declared its Nature Conservation Day.

The Friday declaration was also marked by the General Assembly of the United Nations that declared the year 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB).

The focus of this year's observance of the International Day for Biological Diversity is the "Invasive Alien Species", which presents one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and the ecological and economic well-being of society. Each year the cost of damage caused by invasive species is estimated to cost US$1.4 trillion (Global Invasive Species Program, www.gisp.org).

The world is invited to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth. National committees will be set up this year and encouraged to "achieve a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss... as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on earth".

Now during this IYB, it's time for the government of Indonesia to get serious about saving species and make sure it's high on its agenda for this year, as we're rapidly running out of time.

It is time for more action, bringing more stakeholders into action to reduce deforestation, halt coral reef destruction, avoid species extinction, and control invading species as mentioned in Vice President Boediono's speech Friday.

This action will need high-level support, in a similar way to President SBY's commitment in Pittsburgh G20 meeting last year, by promising to cut emissions up to 26 percent on a voluntary basis and up to 41 percent if other nations made similar commitments. This commitment can also be applied to the Convention of Biological Diversity this year in Nagoya.