"If land conversion is not controlled, natural disaster such as floods and landslides will continue to happen," Kambuaya said.Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Land conversion must be controlled in order to reduce the area of critical land, Environmental Affairs Minister Balthasar Kambuaya said here on Friday.
"If land conversion is not controlled, natural disaster such as floods and landslides will continue to happen," Kambuaya said after opening Familiarization Toward Green Indonesia 2013.
The environment minister noted that related ministries namely the forestry ministry and the agriculture ministry should continue to control the land conversion and make "Indonesia One Map".
He said it was necessary to make "Indonesia One Map" in order to avoid the overlapping of land functions and to know which one is conservation land, critical land, and tillable land.
Data from the forestry ministry indicated that average deforestation in 2006-2009 period reached 0.83 million hectares per year, that happened 73.4 percent within forest area and 26.6 percent outside forest area.
While the critical land was reported to have reached 30.1 million hectares in 2006 and declined significantly to 27.2 million hectares in 2011.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
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