Norway and
Indonesia’s $1 billion deal to halt the destruction of peatland and forests for
two years in Aceh, a province of the Southeast Asian country, has been broken,
according to the Ecosystems Climate Alliance.
Aceh’s
governor Irwandi Yusuf has agreed to let a palm oil company called PT Kallista
Alam convert protected peat swamp forest into plantations, the alliance said
today in an e-mail.
“We often
see this sort of contravention of law from the usual suspects such as
disreputable logging corporations and oil palm interests, but this time the
highest authority in the province appears to be breaking the moratorium,” Peg
Putt, a senior consultant at Global Witness, a member group of the alliance,
said in the e-mail.
Officials
that grant such permissions are breaking an agreement with Norway that came
into effect in January to protect forests. According to the deal agreed in May
2010, Indonesia would suspend new concessions to companies seeking to convert
forest and peatland into plantations for two years.
Climate
talks are under way in Durban, South Africa to carve out a treaty to extend or
replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. That’s the linchpin of efforts to limit
fossil-fuel emissions blamed for damaging the atmosphere. Forest destruction is
responsible for about 17 percent of global emissions and the talks may
negotiate a deal to protect them.
To contact
the reporter on this story: Catherine Airlie in London at cairlie@bloomberg.net
To contact
the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net
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