A brief overview of Indonesia’s moratorium on new forestry concessions
Indonesia has had one of the world’s highest deforestation rates since 1990 due largely to logging, pulp and paper production, agricultural expansion, fires, and oil palm plantations. A study published last year by Jukka Miettinen, Chenghua Shi and Soo Chin Liew of the Center for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing (CRISP) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) estimated that Indonesia lost 8.8 million hectares, or 9.3 percent, of its forest cover between 2000 and 2010.
Due to high carbon content in its forests and peat swamps, deforestation and forest degradation in Indonesia has a disproportionate impact on climate. Deforestation and degradation accounts for more than 75% of Indonesia’s greenhouse has emissions, according to various estimates.
Forestry — logging and oil palm, timber, and pulp plantations — accounts for less than 5 percent of Indonesia’s economy, but more than 80% of its emissions, according to the Indonesian government.
All figures in hectares |
Indonesia’s moratorium on new forestry concessions was proposed in 2010 under an agreement with Norway to reduce emissions from deforestation and peatlands degradation. Set to begin Jan 1, 2011, the moratorium was not defined until May 2011 due to battles over what lands would be included. The moratorium was originally expected to include all forest areas, but lobbying by industrial sectors led to significant weakening, resulting in only peatlands and primary forests being included in the moratorium, with loopholes for mining and some energy and food crops. Existing concessions
are exempt from the moratorium and shortly after the adoption of the moratorium, the amount of land allocated for industrial timber and pulp plantations was roughly doubled.
The moratorium map is revised every 6 months based on ground-truthing surveys to reflect realities on the ground, since forest and land use maps different between Indonesian agencies. To date there have been three revisions: May 2011, when 69,144,073 ha were protected under the moratorium; November 2011, 65,374,251 ha; and May 2012, 65,282,006 ha. As of May 2012 some 14.5 million hectares of primary forests and peatlands are included under the moratorium.
The special presidential unit UKP4 and the REDD+ Task Force are charged with implementing moratorium. UKP4 has authority to investigate any of 33 of Indonesia’s national agencies. However despite authority, UKP4 has met resistance from provincial governments and other agencies, including the Ministry of Forestry, which controls Indonesia’s vast forest estate. The challenges have been underlined with ongoing destruction of the Tripa peat swamp in Aceh Province on the island of Sumatra despite a directive from UKP4 to cease land clearing.
The moratorium is scheduled to expire in 2013.
Chart: Indonesia’s forest moratorium. Background satellite image courtesy of Microsoft Bing Maps, design by mongabay.com. Click image to enlarge.
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(05/16/2011) Deep in the rainforests of Malaysian Borneo in the late 1980s, researchers made an incredible discovery: the bark of a species of peat swamp tree yielded an extract with potent anti-HIV activity. An anti-HIV drug made from the compound is now nearing clinical trials. It could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year and help improve the lives of millions of people. This story is significant for Indonesia because its forests house a similar species. In fact, Indonesia’s forests probably contain many other potentially valuable species, although our understanding of these is poor. Given Indonesia’s biological richness — Indonesia has the highest number of plant and animal species of any country on the planet — shouldn’t policymakers and businesses be giving priority to protecting and understanding rainforests, peatlands, mountains, coral reefs, and mangrove ecosystems, rather than destroying them for commodities?
