Landslides and flash floods in Indonesia that killed as many as 180 people have set off a heated debate over the role logging may have played in the disaster that covered scores of homes in mud and rock.
Local environmentalists say logging in central Java worsened the situation and exposed the government's failure to rein in illegal logging rampant across the archipelago.
But the administration of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono denies that logging was to blame and has found unlikely support from international conservation groups. Yudhoyono said the best way to avoid future disasters was to move people from hilly areas or near fertile, flood plains.
They said the cause of the landslide likely had more to do with the makeup of central Java, where thousands live in flood-prone areas and farmers have torn down forests to clear agriculture land and plantations.
"Often the knee-jerk reaction to such tragic disasters is to blame them on excessive tree logging," said Greg Clough, a spokesman with The Center for International Forestry Research, a conservation group.
"Sure, deforestation may play a small part in flooding," he said. "But strong scientific evidence suggests even good forest cover will not prevent flooding in cases like Jember, where reportedly heavy rains fell for several days. Exceptionally long and heavy downfalls saturate the forest soil, making them unable to absorb more water.''
The landslides have reignited the logging issue and pushed it onto the front pages of local papers. The concern has also put the government on the defensive.
"There is no illegal logging case as reported by the media. The disaster is caused by the conversion of many forest areas to become coffee plantations," Forestry Minister Malam Kaban said while visiting Jember.
Forest Watch Indonesia and other environmentalists are not convinced and have called on the government to get tough on logging, especially illegal cutting that contributes to 90 percent of all timber.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS