ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN INDONESIA

　　　農学研究科　Mokhamad Fahrudin（ファハルティン）

EI Nino is one of the climate phenomena that shift in ocean temperatures and atmospheric conditions in the tropical Pacific that disrupts weather around the world. It all starts when eastern Pacific winds head west, plowing ocean water in front of them. When these wind ease, the waves return east, pushing down the thermocline. A layer of cool water normally dilutes the wares ocean surface. As surface temperatures rise, weather pattern changes. But EI Nino eventually bring about its own destruction, Indonesia as one of the country which spread between mainland Asia and Australia also affected with this phenomena.
Indonesia country spread across 3000 miles of the Indonesia and oceans, collection of 17,000 islands and only about 3000 of them inhabited. With almost two-thirds of the country covered in forest, Indonesia has become the world's largest exporter of plywood and other raw material of forestry products. Most comes Sumatra and Kalimantan, where loggers favor the lofty dipterocarps, the dominant hardwood in the canopy. Timber production is running far above sustainable levels. Logging and farming strip 4,700 square miles of forest a year, a rate second only to Brazyl's. Straddling the equator and drenched in rain, which receives its heaviest rains from December through March, when monsoons blow from main land Asia, gathering moisture over Indian Ocean and the South China See. A "dry season" or less wet season arrives in June winds from Australia.
Even though Indonesia country covered about 3000 miles areas, Indonesia faces chronic problem of uneven population distribution. More than 60% of its people are crammed onto Java. To spread development, government sponsor a huge transmigration program Conservative estimates indicate some three million people, most of them poor and landless, have accepted free house lots and supplies as incentives to move. Unassisted migration accounts for at least two million additional people. But poor land sites and conflicts with local population force the migrants try to survive by making them always moving their plantation area. Usually the migrants or nomadic do not have any problem with their life custom, but this year something different has been occurred. When they start to burn bush for their new plantation area, everything has been late, the rain never come to extinguish the fire.
Actually government also promoted a national project to overcome of the lack of food shortages by make a giant paddy zone in Kalimantan, but until to date no further report about his project.