Indonesia has lost 4,000 islands

Located on the world's largest archipelago and dubbed the Kingdom of the Thousand Islands, Indonesia has lost 4,000 islands over the years and reduced to about 13,000 islands after a recently completed island population investigation. of the country - Indonesia's Antara news agency said.

Part of the kingdom of the island of Indonesia from the sky.Photo: Bee

However, the decline in the number of islands in this country has nothing to do with rising sea levels due to global warming, or the exploitation of large quantities of sand for export by the country. - Sudirman Saad, head of the coast monitoring department and the large and small islands under the Ministry of Fisheries and Waterway Transport of Indonesia, said.

"According to the latest survey results, our total number of islands has decreased to about 13,000 islands. This is the most accurate survey data we have, and the previous survey results are not verified. " - Mr. Sudirman Saad said.

Indonesia's island statistics research program began in late 2005 after the United Nations voiced its call for Indonesia to exercise its legal international rights to name all the islands under its ownership. their unification rights.

At the time before the UN made a call, officials from the Ministry of Fisheries and Waterway Transport temporarily agreed that they only officially had 17,504 islands, including about 6,000 uninhabited islands. Based on statistics provided by government officials as well as rebellious politicians of the country.

But by 2010, the statistics had ended and the Indonesian government had officially announced their final list of 13,000 islands. It is expected that 2012 will register names for all islands.

Running more than 5,000 km along the equator, Indonesia owns nearly half of the world's islands, including large islands like New Guinea (together with Papua New Guinea), accounting for two-thirds of the large island area. Kalimantan (also owned by both Malaysia and Brunei) and the sixth largest island in Sumatra. However, about 60% of the 240 million Indonesians are concentrated on the relatively small island of Java, the small island of about one third of the Russian capital.