Marry or divorce, couples green Java

JAKARTA: Hundreds of thousands of trees donated by couples getting married and divorced in the Sragen region of Indonesia's Java Island have made the region greener in recent years, an official said Tuesday.
 
Sragen has a policy stating that all newlyweds provide five seedlings or 25,000 rupiah ($3) and couples applying for a divorce are to supply 25 seedlings or 40,000 rupiah.
 
"We have this policy for the past five years and at least 70,000 trees are collected each year," Ruyatmo, an assistant to Sragen district's head who only goes with his first name, said.
 
"This awareness has been going on although people in Sragen did not know what global warming was all about," he said.
 
"I have never received any complaints from our citizens because the trees go back to them," Ruyatmo said. "They can choose any trees," he said, adding that up to 400,000 trees have made Sragen region a greener place.
 
Delegates, environmentalists and scientists from nearly 190 countries began two weeks of meetings in Bali to set a deadline for replacing the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty aimed at fighting global warming that was signed 10 years ago and expires in 2012.
 
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year said global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases must peak by 2015 and drop by half by 2050 to avoid the worst effects of global warming, including rising sea levels and more frequent droughts.