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Megawati attacks Yudhoyono’s green program

Jakarta Post
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Chairperson of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Megawati Soekarnoputri has attacked the green program initiated by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Megawati said during the launch of her party’s own green program on Sunday that Yudhoyono’s program to plant 1 billion trees throughout the country would further harm the environment.

“The government launched a program to plant millions of trees, but all I can see are rain trees,” Megawati, who is also founder of the Indonesia Botanical Garden Foundation (YKRI), said during a tree-planting event on the banks of the Ciliwung River in Condet, East Jakarta on Sunday. Megawati was joined by Jakarta Governor Joko “Jokowi’ Widodo and her daughter Puan Maharani.

Megawati said that under the 1-billion-trees program that Yu-dhoyono launched in 2011, part of the government’s carbon-mitigation scenario to cut 26 percent in emissions by 2020, more tropical trees should have been planted.

“In Indonesia, we have various kinds of tropical trees. Planting only rain trees will damage the environment,” said Megawati, who briefly attended Bandung’s Padjadjaran University to study agriculture.

The former president, however did not elaborate on the negative consequences of planting too many rain trees.

Megawati’s swipe at Yudhoyono appeared to be a retaliatory attack on the President for recently blaming Jokowi, a potential presidential candidate for the PDIP-P, for traffic congestion in the capital.

During a meeting at the Bogor Presidential Palace in West Java, Yudhoyono said that regional governments were responsible for traffic congestion. 

“We have a decentralized system now. Don’t stage a rally in front of the palace […] if you have traffic jams in Jakarta, just go to Pak Jokowi. If it happens in Bandung, go to [West Java Governor] Ahmad Heryawan,” he said during the meeting.

Jokowi, responded to the President’s statement, saying the central government and his administration had to work together to solve the problem.

When asked for his comment on the government’s 1-billion-tree program, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) executive director, Longgena Ginting, said he did not want to join the political debate. “We don’t want to join the controversy. Our stance is that we support the planting of native or endemic species, not imported species, like eucalyptus. Rain trees, locally known as trembesi, are native Indonesian trees,” Longgena said on Sunday.

Longgena added that the government and the public should not only focus on greening peat lands and open space, but also preserving existing forests.

“The country has a high level of deforestation. In the last four years, we lost 600,000 hectares of forest per year. The deforestation significantly impacts the climate, biodiversity and food supply,” he said.

Indonesia is one of the world’s most forested nation and has 120 million hectares of rainforest. Deforestation in the country is largely due to illegal oil palm plantations, mining and forest fires.

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