21 Maret 2013 - 2854 klik
FRAGRANT WOOD GAHARU: WHEN THE WILD CAN NO LONGER PROVIDE

The importance of gaharu (eaglewood or aloewood or jingkoh or oudh) for many users has long been recognized. Gaharu is also considered the world’s most valuable incence with even higher price for high quality gaharu. Due to its multiuses, demand for gaharu products continues to increase significantly and may cause rapid depletion of gaharu trees in the wilds. Natural habitat of gaharu suffers from uncontrolled exploitation, and as the consequences, some important gaharu-producing trees under a serious degradation. People who live surrounding the forests are the ones who are affected directly from the rapid depletion of gaharu because their livelihood depends on the forest.

On the other hand, forests are now receiving more and more attention from international society because profound appreciation on the function of forest has increased over the years. Forests are no longer seen as a place for timber production only, but also for many non-timber forest products. More importantly, forest is seen a lot as as environmental service provider nowadays. Indonesia is the world’s third largest area of tropical forest, being endowed with nearly 90 million hectares under forest cover. With today’s international focus on climate change, the forests have become the assets that contribute significantly to the country’s income.

It is thus timely to promote sustainable production of gaharu as an important strategy for conserving natural gaharu tree species, thus the forest habitats, and concurrently fulfilling the demand for gaharu products from cultivation. This project of ITTO PD425/06 Rev.1 (I): “ Production and Utilization Technology for Sustainable Development of Eaglewood (Gaharu) in Indonesia” is targeting to achieve the goals. Technology for accelerating gaharu production is intensively studied and several gaharu cultivation plots have been established in several locations in Indonesia. It is our aim to alleviate poverty of particularly forest community by providing simple technology for gaharu production as source of income and to stimulate cultivation of gaharu plants as their valuable backbone commodity.

The objective of this book is to give thorough information concerned with gaharu, and summarize the findings of the state-of-the-art research on gaharu. A key message of this book is to stimulate an understanding that the future of gaharu relies solely on sustainable production of gaharu and habitat conservation, and that technology intervention plays a major role in the process.

Penulis : Irnayuli R. Sitepu, Erdy Santoso, Sulistyo A. Siran, and Maman Turjaman

Download : FRAGRANT WOOD GAHARU.pdf