Indonesians I know tell me that the American and European concern over their rain forests is just because they see maintaining them as an easy fix for offsetting carbon dioxide emissions.
Indonesia is an archipelago of thousands of islands that supports an estimated 220 million people, the main problem they have is overpopulation.
Experience from other countries has shown that population can only be curtailed by increasing the general prosperity of a population and educating its women, and the only way they have of increasing general prosperity is by using otherwise unused rain forest for cash crops.
The various mooted and in situ deals aimed at saving the rain forest leave the Indonesians no better off than they are now, and the population continues to rise and things like illegal logging and fishing are the only way available to feed and house this growing population.
In the west we might well feel a warm glow at the thought of primeval rain forest and its charismatic fauna, to the people who live with and in it it is the only thing they have that might be used to get themselves a better life, and if Americans and Europeans are not prepared to pay for their warm glow then the people who own it will use it for something that does pay, and I for one cannot blame them for it.
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