ABSTRACT
Indonesia is endowed with the second largest expanse of tropical moist forests in the world—more than three-fourths of its 1.9 million square kilometers are officially classified as forestland. Indonesia's forests are important to both the domestic economy and the global environment. Indonesia has a highly articulated set of laws, rules and regulations regarding land use and forest management. Since the inception of Suharto's New Order Regime in 1967, a handful of international conglomerates have dominated forest extraction activities and the wood processing industries. In 2001, the government announced that, beginning in 2003, all forest concession holders would be required to obtain certificates of sustainability or lose their concessions. The long authoritarian rule of President Suharto came to an end, and Indonesia has since been moving towards a more decentralized democratic form of government. The main repositories of that biodiversity are forests and coastal regions, and some biota like mangrove swamps are both forest and coastal.
