Jakarta (Greeners) – Every year, Indonesia faces biodiversity loss due to forest fragmentation, intensive agriculture, invasive plants, mining, pollution, climate change, and forest fires prompted Ministry of Environment and Forestry to prepare regulation to accommodate conservation, benefit sharing, and law enforcement, said the ministry’s secretary general, Bambang Hendroyono.
Citing on Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), Hendroyono said that Indonesia has 1,500 algae, 80,000 spores, 595 lichens, 2,197 ferns, 30,000-40,000 plants with seeds (15.5 percent out of plants in the world), 8,157 vertebrates, and 1,900 butterflies (10 percent out of world’s collection), in 2014.
“There should be an integration between ministries and agencies to protect and make benefits of our biodiversity,” he said, in Jakarta, on Wednesday (1/2).
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Hendroyono said that the ministry acted as National Focal Point of Conference of Biodiversity, held a key role to synergize all programs related to biodiversity, in national and local levels.
Synergy can be attained with the support of suitable institution, proper mechanism, human resources, funding, and efficient and effective monitoring and evaluation system.
Furthermore, in agriculture and fisheries management, policy needs to take place to be in lime with National Biodiversity and Action Plan (NBSAP) to achieve Aichi Biodiversity target and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
The cooperation between government, producers, private sector, food industry, transportation, commerce and consumers are important to achieve.
“Year of 2017 is Year of International Sustainable Tourism Development which can be a momentum to increase awareness and public participation on biodiversity conservation,” he said.
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Director of Environment, Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas), Medrilzam, said that based on the Indonesia Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, issued in 2003, to become the road map to manage biodiversity by 2020, was lack of political support on Indonesia’s biodiversity.
Apart from political support, Bappenas also discovered the lack of socialization and human resources to understand about the issue. In addition, outside support was also minimum.
“For example, the funding, Based on our evaluation, we have a gap of 13.5 dollar per hectare in conservation areas,” said Medrilzam.
Report by Danny Kosasih
22 Des 2023 
