The Environmentalists Blame Govt for Loss of Indonesian Forests

Villagers chop down a tree illegally at the forest reserve in Bojonegoro, East Java, on Dec. 3, 2007. (Reuters Photo/Sigit Pamungkas)

Jakarta. Environmentalists deplored the failure by the government to properly implement its moratorium on logging permits, believed to be responsible for Indonesia’s high rate of deforestation, which according to a new study, was found to be twice as fast as Brazil’s in 2012.

The study, led by Belinda Margono of the University of Maryland and recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change, examined satellite images from 2000 and 2012 and found that Indonesia lost 15.79 million hectares of forest cover during that period. As many as 38 percent of the figure, or 6.02 million hectares, were primary forest — almost the size of Sri Lanka.

The researchers also found that primary forest loss accelerated during the period under review, reaching an annual 840,000 hectares by 2012 compared with Brazil at 460,000 hectares in the same year.

Yuyun Indradi, forest campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia, blamed the forestry industry, including pulp and paper companies; the plantation sector, especially oil palm plantations; and the mining sector, mainly coal.

He said they are responsible for the growing loss of primary and secondary forests — blowing Indonesia’s fight against climate change and ruining biodiversity.

“Deforestation of primary forest was set by the expansion of oil palm [plantations] on Sumatra island, particularly in Riau province,” Yuyun told the Jakarta Globe. “In Riau, the search for unoccupied land for agriculture is almost impossible now and it increases the chances that more trees will be chopped down in national forests.”

He also mentioned the continuous calamity of forest fires triggered by farmers’ slash-and-burn methods, affecting large swaths of peatlands in Riau.

Yuyun said, citing Greenpeace’s own analysis, that around 140 million hectares of land claimed to be state forests had now been reduced to around 50 million hectares.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono introduced a two-year moratorium on new logging permits in 2011, and extended it last year through 2015, as part of his government’s commitment to reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions by 26 percent using its own resources and by 41 percent with international aid.

“The practical implementation of the moratorium is still far from reality. Violations such as opening new land, in illegal ways, and bribery of district heads for permits are still happening,” Yuyun said. “If Yudhoyono is serious about the moratorium, before the end of his term he should be able to protect the rest of the forests and peatlands in order to reduce our carbon emissions from the forestry sector.”

Dealing “seriously” with the matter means investing more on human resources, creating concrete policies and developing relevant infrastructure, Yuyun added.

Meanwhile, Herry Purnomo, a scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research (Cifor), lamented the poor quality of implementation of Indonesia’s spatial plans in general, despite good drafting of those plans — which he said contributed to the failure to safeguard the moratorium in place.

“Most spatial planning processes occur at the provincial level, but those provinces always make changes,” he said.

Indonesia’s forests are among the most extensive and diverse in the world, covering approximately 70 percent of the total land area, but it is threatened by high demand for of land by the growing population, Herry said.

“The only thing we can do is to build strategic communication and good deals among the government, business people and the society,” he added.

He expressed his optimism by referring to an old saying that forests often suffered negative impact of new infrastructure in the form of deforestation, but as the nation developed, it would seek for solutions to revitalize the trimmed forests.

Post SBY

Presidential candidates Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo have planned, if elected, to open up a significant amount of degraded forest lands in Indonesia for agricultural purposes.

Prabowo’s big push strategy entails the opening of up to 4 million hectares of land for farming and bioethanol plantations, while Joko’s program entails a land reform and land ownership program that will apportion 9 million hectares of land for farmers.

Daniel Murdiyarso, principal scientist of Cifor, agreed with those plans and said they would do better if executed on degraded land with low carbon reserves or non-peatland areas.

But Yuyun said the land would be better off used for reforestation, rather than for conversion to agriculture, adding that it was better to boost the productivity of existing agricultural land.

“Take palm oil, we produce four tons per hectare of oil palm, while Malaysia can produce between eight and 12 tons per hectare,” he said, suggesting Indonesia should do better than that. “We can export palm oil without expanding the plantations; rather we should concentrate more on what we’ve already have.”

Herry added that Cifor supported the government’s idea of strengthening forestry management through the creation of forest management units (KPH) in regions. The scheme, he said, allows community involvement, expected to lead to more effective protection of forests.

“It’s how forest, agriculture and plantation activities can get along side by side,” he told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.

He restated that the KPH program is obligated under a forestry regulation, adding that the Ministry of Forestry, in cooperation with the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), currently oversaw 120 units and aimed to increase the figure to 600 over the next five years.

By Vita A.D. Busyra on 11:07 pm Jul 01, 2014