“Save our forests” has been a familiar catch-cry in the media for the past twenty years. And the message has been pretty much the same during that time: more effort is needed to save the pristine rainforests in South America, Indonesia and around the world.

SUMMARY: The rapid expansion in Indonesia’s pulp and paper industry during recent years is retarding the nation’s economic growth and placing excessive demand on Indonesia’s plantations and primary forests.

SUMMARY: CIFOR’s work in Cameroon is helping to promote sustainable cultivation and harvest of non-timber forest products as an alternative source of income to the logging that is destroying the rainforest. Conservationists in Cameroon are promoting sustainable cultivation and harvest of non-timber forest products as an alternative source of income to the logging that is destroying the rainforest.

SUMMARY: Heavily indebted Indonesian pulp and paper companies have to demonstrate they have sustainable supplies of timber if they want their debts restructured. A report by CIFOR suggests current industry estimates of the time required to bring plantations on-line are not realistic.

"USE it or lose it" is an idea that is gradually penetrating the conservation movement. Its latest incarnation is a report snappily entitled "Making markets work for forest communities", which was launched in London on March 7th. Put out by Forest Trends, an American non-governmental organisation, and the Centre for International Forestry Research, a research group based in Indonesia, this report tackles the perception-widespread among drawing-room conservationists-that forests are wild areas devoid of people.

New Report shows indigenous and local groups now control 25 percent of developing world’s forests.

March 7, 2002—The fate of the world’s forests is inextricably linked to the fate of more than 500 million of the world’s poorest people living in and around forested areas, according to a report released today by two of the world’s leading forestry organizations. The report finds that when forest communities have the opportunity to generate income by marketing forest products and services, they are motivated to protect their forest assets.

Masyarakat di pedalaman Kabupaten Malinau, Kalimantan Timur, sangat rawan konflik akibat aksi saling klaim wilayah yang telah maupun akan dieksploitasi untuk kepentingan pertambangan dan usaha kehutanan. Di satu sisi, aksi saling klaim itu menandakan adanya kesadaran masyarakat akan hak-haknya, tetapi itu tidak disertai dengan kesadaran akan kewajiban masyarakat untuk mendapatkan haknya.