While World Bank officials maintain the strategy would contribute to growth, rural economies and preserve endangered tropical forests, NGOs counter that vast timber plantations would damage local ecosystems and livelihoods.
The bank’s report says that 40% of Indonesia’s forests, the third largest outside the Amazon and the Congo, have been lost to loggers in the past 50 years.
In addition to creating 20 national parks and other land management programmes, the Bank supported Indonesian government plans for forest and land rehabilitation on 5 million ha.
Activists with Friends of the Earth International and other groups, including Indonesia’s WALHI, accused the bank of prioritising industrial timber expansion.
In a statement the Bank said the report focuses on “land and people, not forests and trees”.
