Purnomo, concurrently serving as researcher at the Center for Indonesia Forestry Research (CIFOR), told ANTARA that the initiatives of public communities to organize tree-planting activities have played a significant role in reducing deforestation in Indonesia.
"Despite the tree-planting movement having a positive effect, what is essential apart from planting trees is also to maintain them, as maintaining trees is more difficult than planting them," he noted in Jakarta on Monday.
The process of planting trees does not take a lot of time, but caring for trees needs a long-term commitment to ensure that they live and grow for a long period of time, the professor remarked.
Purnomo also suggested communities to opt for fruit-producing tree types for their tree-planting activities if they are looking to not only plant but also conduct harvesting from the trees.
"Harvesting from the trees is also good because by then, the tree would have provided more benefits for us. Hence, I suggest residents to not just plant trees," he noted.
The researcher highlighted Indonesia's net deforestation rate for the 2019-2020 period to have decreased to 115,459 hectares, a significant improvement from 462,400 hectares during the 2018-2019 period.
Purnomo also suggested the authority to improve the national forest management system to further reduce the deforestation rate and achieve net sink in the forestry and other land use sector by 2030.
"We must continue to prevent the functional shift of production forests to plantation estates," Purnomo emphasized.
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Translator: Prisca Triferna V, Nabil Ihsan
Editor: Sri Haryati
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