|
|
| | to front page | back to index | |
| Benefits to the Environment As well as easing human suffering, the transmigration program brings with it a considerable number of environmental benefits. Foremost among these is the stability brought to forest areas where sedentary farming techniques replace slash-and-burn agriculture. In sedentary farming, tilling and fertilizing allow the same plot to produce crops year after year. The unfertilized forest plot cleared by slash-and-burn farmers leave a cleared plot behind as farmers move to another part of the forest where the process of clearing land by cutting down and burning forest and brush is repeated. In years past, the forest was able to rejuvenate itself while farmers moved on from plot to plot in a cycle that might return the farmer to the original plot in some 20 years. But population increases among primitive farmers have reduced the time between use of a forest plot from the approximately 20 years needed for re-growth to less than five years in many areas. Vastly more of Indonesia’s tropical rain forest is destroyed each year by primitive slash-and-burn farmers than by all other means combined. |
| | to front page | back to index | |