JAKARTA Indonesia will attempt to repair its reputation as one of the biggest contributors to deforestation by planting 79 million trees in one day next month.

The initiative is part of a global campaign to plant a billion trees and will precede a UN summit on climate change in Bali in December. “Everybody, residents and officials from the lowest unit of the Government to the President, will take part in this movement,” Ahmad Fauzi Masud, a spokesman for the Forestry Ministry, said. “It will be a national record and, possibly, a world record.” Indonesia had the fastest rate of deforestation in the world between 2000 and 2005, according to the environmental campaign group Greenpeace, which said that an area of woodland equivalent to 300 football pitches was destroyed every hour.

Delegates from 189 countries are expected to attend the summit to discuss a new agreement to fight global warming. The current agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, runs out in 2012. (Reuters)

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