Fact Sheet: Deforestation In Indonesia

• Because of forest clearing, Indonesia is the world's third-largest carbon emitter.
• Indonesia clears a forest area the size of Manhattan every day. (51 square km/20 square miles). By the end of the year, that adds up to an area the size of Denmark.
• In 2007, Greenpeace announced that Indonesia had 'won' the dubious distinction of having the world's highest rate of deforestation. Across the archipelago, 72% of forest has been lost due to legal and illegal clearing, and agriculture-related arson.
• Indonesia is an archipelago comprising 17,500 islands. It is home to over 200 million people.
• Indonesia is in a biodiversity hotspot: it has just 1.3% of the world's landmass, but is home to approximately 17% of Earth's fauna, including 850 endangered species.
• 146 Indonesian mammal species are on the 2007 endangered Red List - by far the world's highest number: most countries have between 3 and 10.
• A 2002 University of Leicester (UK) report demonstrated that the 1997 "El Nino" year burning season released as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire planet's biosphere removes from it in a year. Read more
• According to University of Leicester researchers, the 1997 burning season's 'South East Asian Haze' was the largest annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration detected since records began in 1957.
• Orangutans share 96.4% of our DNA, and are one of our closest relatives.
• The Borneo orangutan is endangered, with a population of under 40,000 remaining in the wild. The Sumatran orangutan is critically endangered: there are approximately 7,300 in the wild. The United Nations Environment Program projects that orangutans will be extinct in the wild within twenty years if current trends continue.
• Dorjee and Governor Irwandi's pilot project for protecting Aceh's forests using carbon trading is called ACEH GREEN.