President Jokowi Participates In Mangrove Planting With Residents In Batam

PHOTO VIA BETWEEN

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo joined the dive into the beach when it was drizzling to plant mangroves with the community in the Setokok Beach area, Batam, Riau Islands.

Jokowi, wearing a red jacket, plunged into the beach and let the water soak up to his thighs, then planted trees that could absorb more carbon together with a number of residents.

Jokowi admitted that he did not feel there was a problem to throw himself into the water. He said he wanted to work together with local residents to plant mangrove seedlings even though they had to feel the cold sea water. Khan isn't funny. No problem, get wet for 5-10 minutes at most, no problem," said he, who covered his head with a jacket in the pouring rain, quoted by Antara, Tuesday, September 28.

After planting mangroves on Setokok Beach, he said, Indonesia has the largest mangrove forest in the world, reaching 3,360,000 hectares. The area is 20 percent of the total mangrove forest in the world. Mangrove forest habitat is commonly located on the coast with quite diverse vegetation and provides important ecological protection for living things, including humans. The threat to the preservation of mangroves is also not light, especially for industrial and other economic interests that require land in the same location as the mangrove habitat.

"This means that we have a strength in the potential of mangrove forests, but the most important thing is to maintain, how to care for, how to rehabilitate the damaged so that our mangrove forests are truly preserved," said Jokowi.

Mangrove ecosystems, continued the president, can improve environmental conditions on the coast, and resist abrasion caused by sea water. Mangroves, he said, can store up to 4-5 times more carbon than mainland tropical forests.

"So once again as a country that has the largest mangrove forest in the world, we must maintain this, because whatever it is, this is Indonesia's strength," he said.

Prior to planting mangroves on Setokok Beach, Batam, Jokowi previously planted mangroves at Raja Kecik Tourism Beach, Bengkalis, Riau. "We involve environmentalists and fishing communities to plant and rehabilitate our mangroves," he said.

In Bengkalis, Jokowi said the government would rehabilitate 34,000 hectares of land and mangrove forests this year.

This mangrove rehabilitation effort also confirms Indonesia's commitment to the Paris Agreement, which contains mitigation and adaptation efforts, including policies regarding funding regarding climate change that have been agreed by countries in the world since 2015.

"(Mangrove rehabilitation) will contribute greatly to the absorption of carbon emissions and this confirms our commitment to the Paris Agreement, to global climate change," he said.