{"id":1371,"date":"2007-05-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/master.k8s.p4.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/press\/1371\/indonesia-makes-it-to-2008-guinness-world-records-as-fastest-forest-destroyer-on-the-planet\/"},"modified":"2019-11-06T17:05:19","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T09:05:19","slug":"indonesia-makes-it-to-2008-guinness-world-records-as-fastest-forest-destroyer-on-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/story\/1371\/indonesia-makes-it-to-2008-guinness-world-records-as-fastest-forest-destroyer-on-the-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesia makes it to 2008 Guinness World Records as fastest forest destroyer on the planet"},"content":{"rendered":"
The next edition of the Guinness Book of World Records will list Indonesia as the country with the fastest rate of forest destruction on the planet. Indonesia is destroying an area of forest equivalent to 300 football pitches every hour. It has already lost 72% of its large intact ancient forests (1) and half of what remains is threatened (2).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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A Greenpeace activist dressed as a logger chainsawed a 20-meter wooden wall symbolizing the Indonesian forests for a \u201chappening art\u201d symbolically depicting the alarming rate of Indonesian forest destruction during Greenpeace Indonesia\u2019s launching of the Forest Defenders campaign on March 16; 2007 at Jakarta\u2019s Independence Proclamation Monument.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Guinness World Records, considered a global authority on
\nrecord-breaking achievements, has confirmed to Greenpeace (3) that
\nthis unfortunate record will feature in its 2008 record book to be
\npublished in September this year. It will read: \u201cOf the 44
\ncountries which collectively account for 90% of the world\u2019s
\nforests, the country which pursues the world\u2019s highest annual rate
\nof deforestation is Indonesia with 1.8 million ha (4,447,896 acres)
\nper year between 2000-2005 \u2013 a rate of 2 per cent annually or 51
\nsquare km (20 square miles) every day.\u201d (4)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a national shame for Indonesia to own this distinction in
\nthe record books,\u201d said Hapsoro, Greenpeace Southeast Asia forest
\ncampaigner. \u201cThese record rates of destruction make Indonesia not
\nonly the fastest forest destroyer but also the world\u2019s number one
\ngreenhousegas polluter from deforestation.\u201d (5)<\/p>\n

The record breaker was announced as the international community
\nare considering reduced or avoided deforestation to mitigate
\nclimate change at the Third Working Group meeting of the
\nIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) taking place in
\nBangkok. Up to 25% of greenhouse gas emissions comes from tropical
\nforest clearance.(6)<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Indonesia\u2019s forests cover over 120 million hectares but the
\nforestry sector is plagued by lawlessness, corruption and forest
\nplunder, which the Indonesian Government is failing to control.
\nInternational demand for timber and paper, as well as commodities
\nsuch as palm oil, is driving this destruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly Indonesia can protect its forests and the people who
\ndepend on them, but countries such as the EU, China, Japan and
\nNorth America must make sure that they are not a clearing house for
\nproducts of forest destruction,\u201d said Hapsoro.<\/p>\n

Greenpeace is calling on the Indonesian Government to stem the
\ntide of forest destruction and to reduce its contribution to
\nclimate change by imposing a moratorium on commercial logging
\noperations in its rainforests. Greenpeace is also calling for
\ncountries to ban the import of forest products that come from
\nillegal or destructive sources.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Notes to Editors: (1) Roadmap to recovery, 2006, Greenpeace
\nInternational (see: http:\/\/www.intactforests.org\/) (2) World
\nResources Institute, 1997, The Last Frontier Forests. (3) Copies of
\nthe certificate from Guinness World Records that confirms the world
\nrecord are available on request. (4) While Indonesia is destroying
\nits forests the fastest in terms of its total forest cover, Brazil
\ndestroys a larger area of forest every year. (5) Hooijer, Silvius,
\nM. Wosten and Page, 2006. PEAT-CO2 Assessment of CO2 Emissions from
\nDrained Peatlands and SE Asia. Delft hydrolics report Q3943. (6)
\nHoughton, RA (2003) Revised estimates of the annual net flux of
\ncarbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use and land
\nmanagement 1850 \u2013 2000. Tellus 55B: 378-90; Houghton, RA (2005a)
\nTropical Deforestation as a source of greenhouse emissions.<\/p>\n

Get involved!<\/h3>\n

Sign up to become a Forest Defender!<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe next edition of the Guinness Book of World Records will list Indonesia as the country with the fastest rate of forest destruction on the planet. Indonesia is destroying an area of forest equivalent to 300 football pitches every hour. It has already lost 72% of its large intact ancient forests (1) and half of what remains is threatened (2).\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":1372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17],"p4-page-type":[16],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability","tag-pollution","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2004,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions\/2004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}