Conservation groups and government sign Sumatra forest deal

Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 09/10/2008

Conservations groups and the Indonesian government have announced a new agreement to help save the tropical forests of Sumatra.
The historic agreement has been endorsed by governors of all the island's provinces and also by four Ministers.

Sumatra is rich in biodiversity and is the only place on earth where tigers, elephants, orangutans and rhinos can be found together.
But in the past 25 years Sumatra has been stripped of almost half of its forest cover leading to fears that it will soon disappear completely.
Now WWF, Conservation International (CI), Fauna and Flora International (FFI), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and other conservation groups working in Sumatra have agreed to help implement the government's commitment to protect what remains of the island's species-rich forests.
Hermien Roosita, deputy minister of environment, said: "This agreement commits all the Governors of Sumatra's ten provinces, along with the Indonesian Ministries of Forestry, Environment, Interior and Public Works, to restore critical ecosystems in Sumatra and protect areas with high conservation values."
Last year at a conference in Bali the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change acknowledged the need to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
Deforestation is the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, generating between 15-20 per cent of global carbon emissions.
More than 13 per cent of Sumatra's remaining forests are peat forests, which sit on the deepest peat soil in the world and clearing these forests is a major source of carbon emissions contributing to climate change.