A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil

The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Indonesia has offered a glimpse of hope for the environment, with its rate of deforestation having decreased for a third year in a row as a result of the government’s response to the devastating 2015-2016 fire crisis, even as global deforestation continues apace.

However, environmental researchers remain cautious about the actual level of forest cover loss in the country as the full impact of fires in 2019 might have been obscured by haze and bad weather conditions.

Despite experiencing the third-highest rate of deforestation in the world, primary forest loss in Indonesia dropped significantly last year, hitting its lowest figures since 2003, according to the recently launched Global Forest Watch report.

Indonesia lost 324,000 hectares of primary forest, just behind Brazil (1.36 million ha) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (475,000 ha), based on satellite data collated by the University of Maryland and released by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in its report.

Researchers have attributed this decline in forest loss to successful forest protection policies that were put in place after Indonesia’s unprecedented 2015-2016 haze and fire crisis, which led to the loss of 929,000 ha of forest cover in 2015 – an all-time high.

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