Indonesia now country with world's highest deforestation rate

"Sumatra is what other islands will become in future, if intensive use of forests continues. If no action is taken, Kalimantan (Borneo) and Papua could have the same fate," said the researcher.

Margono, a renowned expert in the field of deforestation, compiled information from the Indonesian forestry ministry for seven years.

Her efforts to create a statistical base for future forest policies received the support of Joko Widodo, a frontrunner in this year's presidential election who has been declared the winner by most surveys.

"Right now we do not have any plan to conserve the forests, so we have an overlap of diverse data", Jokowi, as Widodo is known popularly, said in a television debate.

Margono and her team believe that if Jokowi is finally declared the winner when the final vote tally is announced later this month, he can address the problem with better data in his hands.

After the Amazon and Congo, Indonesia boasts the largest tropical forests in the world, which include 10 percent of all the plants of the planet, 12 percent of mammals, 17 percent of birds and 16 percent of amphibians and reptiles.

At the same time, the country is the world's largest producer of palm oil and one of the major producers of paper and wood, industries which, along with tree-felling, make Indonesia the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide.