 |
| Haze ahead. Devastating scrub and forest fires are continuing to rage in South Sumatra, limiting visibility in a number of areas and making driving dangerous. Indonesia has one of the worst deforestation rates in the world, blamed largely on pulp and paper, and palm oil companies. (Antara Photo) |
Related
articles
- Indonesia Forest Moratorium Won’t Meet Climate Pledge: Norway
- Aceh Peatland Back on Protected List in Test Case
- Financial Middlemen Muddle Climate Commitments
- Indonesian Government Denies Increased Deforestation
- Indonesia May Have Lost 5m Hectares of Forest Cover Since Moratorium
Unless the
rapid deforestation in one of the world’s most richly-forested countries is
controlled, Indonesians may one day wonder, “where are all the flowers gone.”
To those lyrics by legendary US singer Joan Baez they might also have to add,
and where are all the tigers, elephants, orangutans, birds and ancient forest
communities gone.
While the
1960s icon was singing against the US war in Vietnam, green groups in Indonesia
are waging war against deforestation, in a country that is home to about 15
percent of all known species of plants, mammals and birds. Some are already
critically endangered as a result of deforestation by the palm oil, mining and
paper industries.
As
Indonesia marks the first year of a two-year moratorium on deforestation that
followed a pledge of a billion dollars from Norway, a coalition of
international and local green groups urged Indonesian President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono this week to strengthen the moratorium so that it becomes a real
instrument to reduce, and ultimately halt, deforestation in the country.
“The
existing moratorium only suspends the issue of new forest use permits, it did
not order a review of existing permits. There are other glaring loopholes in
the moratorium which need to be addressed if Indonesia is to honor its
international commitments,” Yuyun Indradi, forests policy adviser, Greenpeace
Southeast Asia, said at a press briefing on Monday.
Such
concerns are being raised ahead of the Rio+ summit on sustainable development
next month.
The
environment groups say the ban is being undermined by weak legislation and weak
enforcement, and provides little extra protection for forests or carbon-rich
peatlands, and nothing to protect the rights of forest-dependent indigenous
peoples and local communities.
They added
that if deforestation rates continue to average more than a million hectares a
year, all of Indonesia’s forests will have been destroyed within the next 50
years.
Earlier
this month, the groups said they had witnessed continuing forest destruction by
several companies despite the moratorium. They estimated that 4.9 million
hectares of primary forests and peatland, out of a total 71.01 million hectares
covered by the moratorium, will be lost to palm-oil industries, coal mines and
other forest conversions by the end of May.
Last week,
Indonesia’s Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s largest paper
companies and one that has been most criticized by green groups, announced that
it would suspend natural forest clearance from June 1, and would hold better
environmental procedures.
The
announcement brought a quick reaction from Greenpeace, denying good practices
from APP. It said images from their latest overflight in February indicate
ongoing clearance of forests across Sumatra region.
Deforestation
is devastating wildlife. Fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers remain in the wild,
orangutans on Sumatra island have gone down from 1,000 in early 2000 to less
than 200 in 2012, while only 3,000 Sumatran elephants are still in the wild,
half the number since 1985, the groups say.
“It is
reasonable to expect that there are many threatened undocumented species,”
Louis Verchot, a scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR), told Inter Press Service.
Deforestation
has also affected whole communities of indigenous people dependent on the
forest for food, shelter and their livelihood. Since most of the land belongs
to the state, the government has given up ancestral rights of the native
communities to businesses, according to indigenous rights groups.
The
deforestation taking place in Indonesia goes much beyond the archipelago’s more
than 17,000 islands. The country is the third largest emitter of climate
changing greenhouse gases after China and the United States.
Greenpeace
says a large volume of the gases comes from the destruction of Indonesia’s
peatlands, considered the world’s most critical carbon stores. They are
believed to store about 35 billion tons of carbon, and when drained, burned and
replaced by acacia, eucalyptus or palm oil plantations, they release carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere.
While green
groups believe Indonesia should do more to stop deforestation, some Indonesian
officials believe the country needs more incentives to do so.
“The
Ministry of Forestry needs a budget of Rp 5 trillion ($538 million) per year to
fight deforestation,” Darori, director general of the Forest Protection and
Nature Conservation from the Ministry of Forestry, told IPS. With a wave of his
hand Darori dismissed the billion dollar pledge by Norway as “not enough.” Indonesia
“needs the support of the world” to carry out this task, he said.
Commenting
on Darori’s remarks, Greenpeace spokesman Indradi said money “is never enough
if we cannot solve the corruption problems in the forestry sector.”
CIFOR’s
Verchot said, “the pledge by Norway was not supposed to solve the whole
problem, but it has transformed the discussion in Indonesia, and in that sense
it is successful … Norway’s pledge over several years is significant and if it
paves the way for additional REDD + money, then the programme can become
sustainable.” REDD+ (Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation Plus) is a global mechanism to reduce emission and deforestation as
well as forest degradation.
Darori, the
Indonesian official, told IPS that authorities have given eight-year jail terms
to 12 plantation owners in Sumatra for illegal logging, and imposed five
billion rupiah ($534,000) fines on each.
Indonesian
President Yudhoyono has pledge to cut emissions in his country between 26
percent and 41 percent with the help of the international community by 2020.
But he has pointed out the importance of the contribution of the forest-based
industries to the country’s economy.
A recent
study showed this contribution to be approximately 21 billion dollars a year —
3.5 percent of the national economy. The sector employs around 4 percent
of the working population.
Inter Press Service
Related Articles:
No comments:
Post a Comment