The Politics of Deforestation in Indonesia

T ROPICAL FORESTS ARE DISAPPEARING IN THE THIRD WORLD at a rate of almost 17 million hectares per year.' In the Ivory Coast, forest cover has decreased by 75 percent since 1960, in Ghana, 80 percent. Asia has lost an estimated 40 percent of its forests. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines has been the most devastated, declining from 15 million hectares of tropical hardwood trees in 1970 to only 1 million in 1987. Indonesia, with 10 percent of the world's rain forests, is losing approximately nine hundred thousand hectares of forest every year.2 Over the last decade, despite increased recognition that deforestation is a serious problem, attempted solutions have been ineffective.3 The International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) estimated that not even one tenth of one percent of remaining tropical forests are being actively managed for sustained productivity.4 Why is deforestation continuing unchecked? One important reason is the inadequacy of conventional explanations of deforestation. These