Indonesia's toxic haze affecting Borneo's orangutans – rescuers

Yahoo – AFP, 17 September 2019

Orangutans at a rehabilitation centre in Nyaru Menten, central Kalimantan are
showing signs of respiratory illness as a result of choking forest fires

Massive forest fires in Indonesia that have caused a toxic haze to spread as far as Singapore and peninsular Malaysia are also seriously affecting endangered orangutans and their habitat, a rescue foundation said Tuesday.

Jakarta has deployed thousands of troops as temporary fireman and deployed dozens of water-bombing aircraft to battle blazes that are turning pristine forest into charred landscape in Sumatra and Borneo islands.

The fires -- usually started by illegal burning to clear land for farming -- have unleashed a choking haze across parts of southeast Asia.

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation said Tuesday that the haze was affecting hundreds of great apes in its care at rescue centres and wildlife re-introduction shelters.

"The thick smoke does not only endanger the health of our staff... but also it affects the 355 orangutans we currently care for", the foundation said in a statement, referring to just once cetre in Kalimantan.

The toxic haze was so bad in parts of Kalimantan that rescuers at an 

Orangutan shelter were keeping the great apes indoors for much of the day

"As many as 37 young orangutans are suspected to have contracted a mild respiratory infection," it added.

Conditions were so bad at their Samboja Lestari facility in East Kalimantan that outdoor activities for the animals had been restricted to a few hours a day.

Orangutans have been particularly vulnerable to commercial land clearances and have seen their natural habitat shrink dramatically in the last few decades.

The population of orangutan in Borneo has plummeted from about 288,500 in 1973 to about 100,000 today, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The toxic smoke caused by the forest fires is an annual problem for Indonesia and its neighbours, but has been worsened this year by particularly dry weather.

On Borneo island, which Indonesia shares with Malaysia and Brunei, pollution levels were "hazardous", according to environment ministry data.

Hundreds of schools across Indonesia and Malaysia were shut.

Mushroom never seen before in the Netherlands pops up in Drenthe

DutchNews, August 8, 2019

A sample of pycnoporellus fulgens. Photo: Mushroom Observer via
Wikimedia Commons

In national park Drents-Friese Wold a species of mushroom has been found that had never been seen before in the Netherlands, RTV Drenthe reports. 

Pycnoporellus fulgens, which has no Dutch name because it never needed one before, only occurs in ancient pine forests where human intervention has been kept to a minimum. 

‘The find shows that the beautiful old pine forests in Drenthe can be compared to the natural, unspoilt pine forests in Scandinavia,’ said mycologist Rob Chrispijn who discovered the mushroom. 

The species is rare and usually grows in mountainous areas. Mycologists are now trying to find out why the mushroom suddenly put in an appearance in the lowlands. 

The Dutch Mycological Society has proposed to name the species the ‘Oranje sparrenhoutzwam’, or Orange sprucewood mushroom.

Indonesian man walking in reverse to save forests

Yahoo – AFP, August 5, 2019

Medi Bastoni walks 20 to 30 kilometres backwards every day under the scorching sun,
with a rear-view mirror attached to his backpack to avoid bumping into objects (AFP
Photo/Medi BASTONI)

Jakarta (AFP) - An Indonesian man is walking 700 kilometres (435 miles) from his home on a volcano in East Java to Jakarta in the hope of drawing attention to the archipelago's quickly shrinking forests -- and he is doing it backwards.

Medi Bastoni, a 43-year-old father of four, set out on his arduous, in-reverse journey in mid-July, with the goal of reaching the capital by August 16, a day before the Southeast Asian nation's independence day anniversary.

"Of course I'm exhausted, but I'm willing to do this to fight for the next generation," Bastoni told AFP.

"(My home) is losing all of its trees so I have to do something. I can take the pain and fatigue."

Walking backwards is a siganl to Indonesians to reflect on the past and remember 

how national heroes fought for the good of the country (AFP Photo/Medi BASTONI)

When he arrives, Bastoni said he hopes to meet with president Joko Widodo and highlight deforestation across the archipelago including at his home on Mt. Wilis, a dormant volcano.

Indonesia suffers from one of the high rates of deforestation in the world, according to Greenpeace.

Bastoni walks 20 to 30 kilometres backwards every day under the scorching sun, with a rear-view mirror attached to his backpack to avoid bumping into objects.

Along the way, supporters cheer him on, offer him meals or a place to stay overnight. But Bastoni always leaves at dawn to stay on schedule.

Walking backwards is meant as a siganl to Indonesians to reflect on the past and remember how national heroes fought for the good of the country, he said.

Joko Cuts Short US Trip to Deal With Fire, Haze Crisis

Jakarta Globe, Basten Gokkon, October 27, 2015

President Joko Widodo inspects a firefighting operation on burning peat forest in
Pulang Pisau district, Central Kalimantan, on Sept. 24. The president has cut short
 his inaugural visit to the United States to coordinate a response to the worsening
forest fires. (AFP Photo/Romeo Gacad)

Jakarta. President Joko Widodo has decided to cut short his first official visit to the United States as a forest fire crisis blazes out of control back home.

“The president has received recent updates from the minister for politics, legal and security affairs minister regarding the haze that has affected more Indonesian people,” Arrmanatha Nasir, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, told the Jakarta Globe late on Monday.

He said Joko and part of his delegation would immediately return home on Tuesday after attending scheduled events in Washington, D.C., where the president met with President Barack Obama, congressmen and US executives on Monday.

Joko’s return means he will not attend much-anticipated meetings with technology executives from Apple, Google and Microsoft, among others. Representing him in Silicon Valley instead, Arrmanatha said, will be the communications and trade ministers, as well as the head of the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM).

Arrmanatha said the president would fly to either South Sumatra or Central Kalimantan once he arrives back in the country. Both provinces are among the hardest hit by forest fires generating intense volumes of health-threatening haze.

A top legislator earlier on Monday lashed out at the president for going abroad just as the fire and haze crisis worsens. Up to three-quarters of Indonesia is affected to varying degrees by the haze.

Related Articles:

Indonesia fires can't be put out, Malaysian minister warns
Singapore banks urged to curtail loans to haze-linked firms

#INFOGRAPHIC Updated map and pollution data on the Southeast Asian haze @AFP pic.twitter.com/rIWRmxjas1

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) October 27, 2015

Conflict of interest claims over Malaysian timber imports

DutchNews.nl, July 15, 2015

Dutch government ministers have accused environmental groups Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund of having a conflict of interest in the approval of imports of Malaysian timber, Trouw reports. 

The government said earlier this week the Netherlands will support the import of Malaysian timber with an MTCS certificate rather than FCS certification, which is backed by the environmental groups. 

Junior environment minister Wilma Mansveld and junior economic affairs minister Sharon Dijksma say in a parliamentary briefing that ‘in concrete terms, several NGOs which were involved in founding the FSC certification system want to promote it’. 

This, the ministers imply, is why Greenpeace and the WWF do not support MTCS certification. 

However, WWF spokesman Jaap van der Waarde told Trouw the accusations of a conflict of interest are ‘incomprehensible’. 

‘The fact that my organisation forms part of the board of another certification system is irrelevant,’ he said. ‘The Malaysian certification system does not do the job.’ 

Economic interests

Malaysian forests are still being cut down and ‘it would appear that if the economic interests are big enough, certification systems do not need to meet Dutch sustainability targets,’ he told the paper. 

Successive Dutch governments have wrestled with the approval of Malaysian timber and both an independent commission and the Dutch courts have ruled there is no question of Malaysian timber being harvested sustainably, Trouw says. 

The ministers argue that the problems have now been solved and that a ‘final check’ will be made to ensure Malaysian timber imported into the Netherlands does come from sustainable sources.

In APRIL’s No-Deforestation Pledge, Promises of Hope and of Pitfalls

Jakarta Globe, Daniel Waldroop, Jun 17, 2015

Forest cleared by one of Asia Pulp and Paper’s suppliers in Riau in this
Feb. 28, 2012, file photo released by Greenpeace. (EPA Photo/Kemal Jufri)

Jakarta. Two weeks ago, paper and pulp giant Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings, or APRIL, made an announcement that sent shockwaves through Indonesia’s environmental circles: It pledged to immediately stop all deforestation and to enact a policy of protecting one hectare of land for every hectare it develops.

Just 10 years ago, this kind of agreement would have been unimaginable, but the industry has changed rapidly under pressure from a combination of environmental watchdog groups, initiatives by the central government, and the public’s growing concern about deforestation.

Tony Wenas, the president director of Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (RAPP), APRIL’s main subsidiary, tells the Jakarta Globe that the decision annlounced on June 3 has been in the works for a long time.

“Back in 2002 we introduced the wood legality system. In 2005 we applied the high conservation values assessment over our plantation. In 2014, we launched the sustainable forest management policy, where we committed to 1:1 conservation to development.  And now we’ve fast-forwarded,” he says.

“It’s a journey,” Tony adds.  “It doesn’t happen overnight.”

APRIL has joined a number of large paper companies in making these pledges. One of its largest competitors, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), announced a similar pledge almost three years ago. Today almost 80 percent of Indonesia’s pulp and paper manufacturers have agreed to end deforestation.

The change has been a long time coming. In 2003, Greenpeace launched an aggressive and public campaign against paper producers, focusing on APP. But rather than go after them directly, Greenpeace focused on their customers, major companies like Mattel Toys. For the price of doing business with APP, Mattel found its headquarters draped with a large banner featuring the iconic Barbie doll being dumped by Ken because he doesn’t “date girls who are into deforestation.”

Greenpeace kept the campaign going for a whole decade, targeting more than 100 APP clients to shame them into ending their contracts. In 2013, APP announced that it would no longer contribute to deforestation.

RAPP’s Tony readily admits the role that NGOs like Greenpeace have played.

“The input from the civil society, we listen to that.  And we like to be accommodating as well,” he says.

But there are other forces at play that led to APRIL’s commitment. “If produced sustainably,” Tony says, “our product will be better received worldwide.  There will be more trust.”

In fact, Tony believes the changes could boost profits.

“Because we invest in the environment and people, at the end of the day, we’ll be balanced, or with even more value,” he says.

And that’s enough for APRIL’s shareholders, whom Tony says are supportive of the company’s environmental commitment.

‘If they fail, we hit them’

The government too, has played its part. In his 2014 presidential election campaign, Joko Widodo called for greater oversight of the forestry industry, telling reporters that “if we have good, tough law enforcement, then it can be resolved.”

Last month, President Joko extended his predecessor’s moratorium on forest-clearing, although he declined to strengthen the regulation to include the roughly 48.5 million hectares currently without protection.

But APRIL’s commitment hasn’t satisfied everyone.

Nirarta Koni, director of the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Indonesia, applauds APRIL’s pledge, but says there’s more work to be done.

“A pledge is just a pledge if there’s no other parties who watch that and make sure they’re doing their job,” he says.

Teguh Surya of Greenpeace Indonesia agrees that the fight against deforestation has shifted from shaming paper companies to supporting them.

“They put on the table a strong commitment. Why don’t we give them the space to change and monitor together and ensure together? If they fail, we hit them. That’s the new paradigm of the campaign now,” he tells the Globe.

Tony defends APRIL’s commitment and says that he welcomes the scrutiny.

“We didn’t want to commit what we couldn’t commit. We are walking the talk. We’re asking their help. Please help us monitor. Please come with us to the fields to see how people are harvesting things,” he says.

The one map

Even with close collaboration between the private sector and watchdog groups, challenges for Indonesia’s environment remain.

Since the rapid decentralization post-1998, land ownership in paper-producing areas like Kalimantan has been fraught with conflict. The local and central governments, business interests and locals all vie for control of land.

And for local farmers and indigenous peoples outgunned by large corporations, the results can be disastrous. Several thousand disputes between locals and businesses over land ownership fester for lack of a way to mitigate them. Without even a standardized map to track ownership, resolutions are rare.

Koni of the WRI has proposed a solution. His institute has launched the “One Map Initiative,” which aims to create a single record for all stakeholders to use.

“We will use the map as a way to communicate among stakeholders.  If everyone has their own map, there will be conflict,” he says.

And right now, that’s the unfortunate reality.

“The forestry ministry has their own map,” Tony says. “The mining ministry has their own map. The agrarian office has their own map. And the local government has their own map.”

“One hundred percent people in this country, across backgrounds, across institutions, agree with the one map,” says Greenpeace’s Surya. “The question is, what is the one map?”

It’s not an easy question to answer. Though Joko promised to deliver to deliver a single map for all of Indonesia, it hasn’t materialized yet.

Amicable solutions

But even with a standardized map, Koni thinks further reform will be needed.  He envisions a setting in which all stakeholders in land use disputes can work collaboratively.

“We need good communication and a forum where everyone could come and could be scrutinized by others,” he says, and where the results “would be positive for everyone.”

Koni believes the idea of conditional amnesty is crucial; disputes will be resolved if the admission of past transgressions doesn’t lead to lawsuits.

“If a company had a complaint from locals that they had grabbed their land and [planted] oil palms there, the solution could be that the company admits that they were wrong because the data at that time was wrong. The locals would say that they wouldn’t make a claim in court, but get to keep the palm oil,” he said.

His inspiration for such a forum comes from an unlikely place: post-apartheid South Africa.

“After apartheid came down in South Africa, they had a new system whereby the people can be pardoned if they give back the land,” he says.

Tony agrees with the sentiment.

“The best solution is amicable, not based on court decisions,” he says. “We’ve never brought any disputes to the court. The local communities have, but not on our side. It’s all been based on discussion and negotiation.”

But Surya maintains that such agreements shouldn’t leave out the justice system.

“Even if the company has already committed to shift their business to be green, it doesn’t give the privilege to be free from the law,” he says.

Whatever the future holds, Koni thinks Indonesia needs to act quickly.

“A year of two ago we didn’t have this kind of pledge. We didn’t have this kind of commitment from the private sector. If we don’t use this opportunity, we’ll lose it,” he says.

It’s a sentiment reflected by Surya. For him, the fight for a greener Indonesia continues.

“We have to keep moving. We only have Indonesia. They have money and international people. They only have their business here. But for me and for my generation, whatever Indonesia’s situation, I’ll stay here,” he says.

World Bank Urges Better Resource Management in Indonesia

Indonesia loses $4 billion from its rain forests to illegal logging.

Jakarta Globe, Vanesha Manuturi, Jun 10, 2015

Farming is seen in the protected areas of the Kerinci National Park (TNKS),
in Kerinci, Jambi, in May. (Antara Photo/Wahdi Septiawan)

Jakarta. The World Bank has pressed Indonesia to improve resource management and governance as the country works towards more sustainable and environmentally-friendly economic growth over the next five years.

“Indonesia has enjoyed tremendous growth … but not all are benefiting from these achievements and they come with a high price of environmental degradation,” said Sri Mulyani Indrawati, managing director and chief operating officer at the World Bank, on the first day of the Indonesia Green Infrastructure Summit 2015 in Jakarta on Tuesday.

She pointed to Indonesia’s forestry industry as an example of the country’s murky governance track record.

“Every year, Indonesia loses some $4 billion through illegal logging. Meanwhile, revenue from forestry licensing amounts to only $300 million per year,” she said. “This is a problem of governance, manifested in poor performance that impacts the implementation of existing regulations or design of better laws.”

Sri Mulyani — who was a former finance minister in the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration before resigning in 2010 — also noted “an information gap” among government agencies in Indonesia, which has led to a lack of transparency and efficiency in resource management.

“The energy sector, for example, needs more and better data on simple energy use and emissions,” she said.

Still, the World Bank managing director praised the government’s moratorium on new fishing permits for large operations as an “encouraging development.”

“A well-managed ‘blue’ economy can ensure food security, promote sustainable tourism and build resilience. But degradation through overfishing and dumped waste exacerbates poverty and undermines food security globally,” she said.

Improving governance of the fisheries sector coupled with large-scale investment in maritime transport and trade infrastructure could double fish production in the next five years, according to Sri.

During the same summit, Vice President Jusuf Kalla admitted the government’s stance to maintaining a sustainable economic growth has been lackluster.

“We’ve always thought about environmental issues after we’re faced with problems,” Kalla said.

“We’ve learnt and we are now learning with economic principles that are sustainable so that we can pass down this country for the next generation.”

Under President Joko Widodo, the government wants to boost growth to 7 percent over the next five years, bolstered by greater investment — both by the government and the private sector — in infrastructure development.

Joko’s infrastructure vision for the country includes the development of new power plants with a total capacity of 35,000 megawatts and nine million hectares of agriculture land across the country.

In a bid to encourage more environmentally-friendly investments, Indonesia currently offers tax allowances to nine business areas relating to environmental preservation, including geothermal power, refining and natural gas processing industry, organic basic chemical industry, and clean water reservoir and purification industry.

In April, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya said that the ministry plans to offer more incentives — such as soft-loan facilities, business permit extensions and free import duties — to local and foreign investors with technology which reduces pollution and conserves energy.

GlobeAsia

Activists Urge Jokowi to Renew Forest Clearing Ban

Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s moratorium on deforestation will soon come to an end

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia, May 06, 2015

Indonesia has the third largest area of tropical rainforest on the planet, but
also one of the fastest rates of deforestation. (EPA Photo/Bagus Indahono)

Jakarta. Environmental activists have called on President Joko Widodo to extend and strengthen a forest-clearing moratorium that runs out this month.

The moratorium on issuing permits to clear peat and primary forests was introduced in May 2011 by then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and slated to run for only two years. Yudhoyono extended it in 2013 on a temporary basis, and activists say Joko now has the chance to make a lasting positive impact by giving the moratorium a firmer legal basis.

Any extension to the moratorium “must stipulate punitive measures for people or companies that violate it,” Zenzi Suhadi, a forest campaigner for the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi, told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.

“This is needed to curb [the illegal] issuance of licenses for forest exploitation, whether for mining or for large-scale plantations,” he added.

He noted that the moratorium as enforced by the Yudhoyono administration was for all practical intents toothless, noting that the Forestry Ministry issued mining and agriculture concessions for 12 million hectares of forest land, much of it ostensibly off-limits under the moratorium, between 2011 and 2014.

“During this period, there was no punishment for the violators,” Zenzi said. “The next moratorium should include punitive measures to ensure that no one hurts the environment.”

He also said it was important that the moratorium be supported by a new agency “to supervise its implementation as well as enforce the law.”

“The government must consider extending the moratorium period. It’s been proven that a two-year moratorium isn’t as effective as expected.

Making it longer will help the government prioritize its to-do list, from evaluation to license review to management refinement,” Zenzi added.

The original moratorium was enacted as part of a deal that would see Norway provide up to $1 billion in funds for climate change mitigation projects in exchange for demonstrable protection on Indonesia’s part of high conservation value forests, including peat forests, which store enormous amounts of carbon dioxide.

Critics, though, have long argued that the moratorium does far too little to protect such areas, given that it applies only to new concessions and not to existing ones on peat and primary forests.

In the time since the moratorium went into force, nearly 970,000 hectares of peat forest have been cleared, half of that total coming from the heavily logged Sumatran provinces of Riau and Jambi, according to a study by Walhi and environmental nongovernmental organization Kemitraan.

The study also found that in some regions, up to four-fifths of the primary and peat forests identified as off-limits for new concessions are already protected under prevailing zoning regulations, hence the moratorium is doing little to expand the scope of forest protection.

Progressive revisions have also seen the map of areas protected under the moratorium shrink, with dozens of concessions issued across the country for land that was at one point included in the moratorium map, says Hasbi Berliani, Kemitraan’s program manager for good governance.

The forest area that falls outside the moratorium map “is really wide.”

“It is really crucial for the government to strengthen [a] few points in the moratorium to protect other areas [that] haven’t been included within. As long as the moratorium doesn’t include it, it’s useless,” Hasbi said.

Zenzi echoed the sentiment, saying that what Indonesia really needed was not a moratorium on new concessions, but a termination program for existing licenses.

“The situation is critical,” Zenzi said, noting that when the moratorium was renewed in 2013, it included new concessions for energy and food production, thanks to what he called corporate lobbying. “This cost the country 1.2 million hectares.”

“This year, there’s the possibility of intervention from the biofuel and food lobbies, and exemptions for border regions,” Zenzi added.

Strong government commitment, he said, was key to an effective moratorium.

“However big the intervention, once the government is committed to the people, it won’t compromise or make any exceptions unless it’s in the interests of the people,” Zenzi said.

The Forestry and Environment Ministry says it wants to extend the moratorium as part of a wider program to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 26 percent by 2020, and has welcomed suggestions of environmental groups in drafting an extension.

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno

In Mataram Declaration, Belated Recognition of Indigenous Rights

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia,  Apr 23, 2015

The government is finally getting serious about recognizing Indigenous
groups’ forest rights. (Antara Photo/Ahmad Subaidi)

Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara. Proponents of the rights of indigenous groups have hailed a pledge by the Indonesian government to do more to recognize their stewardship of forests, seen as crucial in efforts to stave off deforestation.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar made the so-called Mataram Declaration last weekend in a belated response to a May 2013 Constitutional Court ruling relinquishing the state’s default claims to forested areas settled and used by indigenous groups.

“Long before this, civil society organizations and local communities were struggling for the recognition and protection of customary land,” said Abetnego Tarigan, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi. “Now the government has shown good faith, and we really appreciate it.”

He said the central and local governments often violated indigenous people’s land rights because the latter lacked title deeds to their land. In many cases, he noted, the people were disenfranchised of their rights, and their land given over to logging, plantation or mining operators.

“There are a few policies that regulate the rights of local communities to the land, such as the 2012 law on customary forests, but they don’t cover the recognition of people’s customary territory, so we need another framework to guarantee it,” Abetnego said. “This declaration should really be a form of political will for all stakeholders to push the recognition and protection of customary forests managed by the people.”

Civic-centered development

At the signing of the declaration on Saturday in Mataram, in West Nusa Tenggara province, Siti said the government and other stakeholders were committed to expediting the process to craft policies that improved the welfare and protection of local communities and conserved the environment.

“These policies are really important,” she said. “President Joko Widodo’s government has indicated that the citizenship concept is a democratic one, in which we seek to bring welfare to the people.”

She said the government was making efforts to involve people, especially indigenous groups, in environmental protection.

“Here, our development must be civic-centered,” Siti said. “This issue has been echoed by the people and environmental organizations, and now the government is listening.”

Under Joko’s 2015-2019 National Mid-Term Development Plan, the administration plans to designate 12.5 million hectares of land for “social forestry,” in which indigenous groups and local communities will commit to sustainable forestry practices, and nine million hectares for agriculture.

“These [social] forests can be developed as community forests, village forests and customary forests,” Siti said, adding that the agricultural land, to be staked out from former logging concessions, would go primarily to subsistence farmers.

Collaborative effort

Siti said it was important for all stakeholders — the central government, regional administrations, civil society organizations and local communities — to work closely together.

“The policy is ready to go, but we can’t do it alone. We need help from other stakeholders to cooperate. For example, I hope the Home Affairs Ministry will help us identify indigenous communities and their problems to ensure that all land is distributed rightly and fairly,” she said.

“We also need civil society organizations to work with the people on mediation, community building and others. Access to welfare for all Indonesians is our responsibility.”

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, an adviser to the Home Affairs Ministry, said the institution was open to cooperating with the other stakeholders.

“But the identification process isn’t easy. There are a few requirements to meet before we can definitively say that a given community is an indigenous one,” he said. “The process must be really selective. And this is the task of regional leaders.”

Zudan said that for a forest community to qualify, it would have to show some kind of environmentally sustainable practice in its interactions with the forest.

“Here we need experts and help from civil society organizations,” he said.

People first

Siti said the new policy, unlike previous ones, prioritized the role of people in economic development through the exploitation of forests and other natural resources.

“I believe the system will be no longer like the past, when government didn’t put the people at the front of its development plans. Now, we must use dialogue in our approach to developing the economy of this country,” Siti said.

West East Nusa’s Deputy Governor Muhammad Amin welcomed the declaration, but said further talks on the issue were still needed between the central government and regional administrations.

“We realize there hasn’t been a regional policy that recognizes the territorial rights of indigenous people. However, with this declaration, we hope that the people will receive greater consideration in the policy-making process,” he said. “Should the synergy run smoothly, we may be able to achieve an environment-oriented development framework.”

Yansen T.P., the head of Malinau district in North Kalimantan, who was among the more than 30 regional heads attending the Mataram Declaration, said an increasing number of regions across the country were beginning to prioritize land rights protections when crafting new policies.

“We’ve been done a lot for several years now to show our support for our environment,” he said. “We have vast areas of natural resources and considerable local wisdom. The forest we have is the forest we must hold on to. We understand that people depend on the forest and they will try to maintain it. But to do that, we in the regional government have to provide them with legal certainty.”

Yansen said he hoped that future investments would “take the side of the people.”

“We don’t need to exploit all of our natural resources right away. We have to think about our children, grandchildren and our future generations,” he said. “Hopefully the central government’s policy will accelerate the recognition of indigenous people’s right to the forest.”

Test cases

Adi Rozal, the head of Kerinci district in Sumatra’s Jambi province, said his administration had designated 12 swaths of forest as customary forests.

“Now we’re waiting for coordination from the central government to issue a policy that fully mandates the forests for use by the local community,” he said.

Mathius Awoitauw, the head of Jayapura district in Papua province, agreed that while the central government had a key role to play, it was local governments that would serve as the test cases for various frameworks on the issue.

“All we need to do to establish nationwide synergy is to hold regular dialogues to test how capable regional governments and people are in managing their forests. In addition, there should be a regulation that truly guarantees the rights of each region to map its own customary forests,” he said.

In prioritizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities, the government has switched from an earlier paradigm that served large corporations, said Chalil Muhammad, the chairman of the Association for Community and Ecology-Based Law Reform, or Perkumpulan HuMa.

“There’s a need to create a scheme to build rights coordination between the central government, regional governments and the people in an effort to prevent forests from rampant exploitation,” he said. “These stakeholders need to change their mind-set. We need to increase human resource capacity and fix existing forestry policies.”

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno

Police Release Grandmother Accused of Stealing Teakwood

Jakarta Globe, Carlos Paath, Mar 16, 2015

A 63-year-old woman was sent to a police detention center in the East Java
 district of Situbondo on Dec. 15, for allegedly stealing teak from a plantation.
Her son-in-law is a carpenter. (Antara Photo/Adeng Bustomi)

Jakarta. A 63-year-old woman, who was arrested three months ago on suspicion that she had taken wood from a teak plantation managed by state-owned forestry firm Perhutani, was released from an East Java jail on Monday following a public outcry.

Asyani was sent into a police detention center in the East Java district of Situbondo on Dec. 15, after Perhutani reported her to police for the alleged theft.

The company reportedly noticed that 38 wooden beams had disappeared from its plantation, and that the items were found at Asyani’s house in Secangan village in Jatibanteng subdistrict, not far from the plantation.

The alleged theft apparently took place five years ago.

Asyani works as a traditional masseuse in her village. Her son-in-law, though, is a carpenter based in the same village.

The court in Situbondo ordered her release on Monday, but added that the case against her would still proceed. Asyani has been charged for violating the forest protection law and may face up to five years in prison.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya said on Monday that she and President Joko Widodo would continue to monitor the case.

“The president is concerned about this case. Pak Jokowi is quite sensitive about such things,” Siti said.

“Last Friday, he asked me about the progress of the case and I have reported all the details to him.”

The minister said Asyani, who was first reported as being 45 years of age, was granted a release due to her age and health condition.

“The alleged offense also occurred five years ago. We have to understand Asyani’s condition,” Siti said.

“This also serves to show people that our law is non-discriminatory,” she added, in reference to criticism that law is only enforced when the perpetrators are poor people, while corporate executives guilty of larger crimes of deforestation have remained largely untouchable.

Asyani’s lawyer, Supriono, has maintained that the teak beams found at Asyani’s house did not belong to Perhutani. He said the beams were made when Asyani’s late husband cut down his own teak trees five years ago, when he was still alive.

Perhutani claims that it had lost Rp 4 million ($300) because of the alleged theft.

The case has drawn attention from students, politicians and environmentalists, who have urged the police to release Asyani.

Germany Pledges €13.5m to Support Indonesian Forest Protection: Report

Jakarta Globe, Mar 15, 2015

Germany has pledged $14 million to help support biodiversity conservation
 and watershed rehabilitation in Central Sulawesi. (AFP Photo)

Jakarta. Germany has pledged €13.5 million ($14 million) for a forest and biodiversity conservation program in Sulawesi, state-run news agency Antara has reported.

The funding will be invested in the Forest Progam III, which is part of Indonesian-German REDD+ cooperation, and is focussed on the Palu/Miu watershed and Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi.

A feasibility study, which looked at biodiversity conservation and watershed rehabilitation, as well as land use conflict in the area, was carried out last year.

Antara reported on Friday that the agreement is due to be signed by Germany’s ambassador to Indonesia, Georg Witschel, and Robert Pakpahan, the Finance Ministry’s risk management directorate, on Monday.

Germany and Indonesia have cooperated on REDD+ projects in the past, including the Forest for Climate Change Program (FORCLIME), which aimed to reduce Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions from the forestry sector.

Palm Oil King Shifts From Forest Foe to Advocate

Jakarta Globe, Yuriy Humber & Ranjeetha Pakiam, Mar 13, 2015

In this handout photograph released by Greenpeace areas of forest cleared
 for palm oil plantation are seen in Jambi Province on Indonesia's Sumatra
island on Oct. 20, 2013. (AFP Photo)

The sprawling palm oil industry is the destroyer of rainforests and tormentor of endangered species across Southeast Asia, to hear environmental groups tell it.

And if there’s one executive who embodies this contentious $50 billion business, it’s Singaporean commodities magnate Kuok Khoon Hong. He’s the palm oil king, co-founder and chairman of giant Wilmar International, the industry’s biggest trading firm. It handles almost half of the global trade in the commodity.

Yet, these days Kuok is no longer portrayed as a villain by activists and non-governmental organizations. He’s actually become central to their campaign to prod the industry into adopting new, eco-friendly business practices that may start to arrest the environmental damage in the region.

“I would consider myself an environmentalist today,” Kuok said in an e-mail.

“I changed a few years ago when I saw the damage climate change had on the environment in some countries.”

The story of how Kuok’s position changed is based on an e-mail correspondence with him and interviews with industry executives, experts and environmentalists familiar with his thinking.

The portly 65-year-old, who sports a head of jet-black hair, has a warm, avuncular demeanor and a tendency to wink as he speaks. He’s also a pragmatist and a member of one of Asia’s most powerful business clans.

Extracted from the orange pulp of a palm fruit, palm oil is the most ubiquitous edible oil in the world, consumed every time you brush your teeth, wash your hair, slurp some ice cream or put on lipstick.

As commodities go, it’s cheap, versatile and high-yielding. Cultivation of palm oil ties up more than 17 million hectares worldwide, an area four times the size of Switzerland.

Europe’s backlash

The business has made Kuok a billionaire and lifted many communities in Southeast Asia and Africa out of poverty. It’s also led to mass deforestation and air pollution across Southeast Asia.

A consumer backlash against using palm oil in Europe and other developed economies threatens the profitability of the industry. Kuok says the solution is not to shun the fruit, but change the way it’s produced.

Wilmar’s experience may also offer up lessons to other industries whose expansion and business practices pose risks to the environment.

A bad year

Back in 2013, Kuok had every reason to believe the world might be conspiring against him. That year, the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, disclosed that it had dumped shares in 23 palm companies, citing environmentally harmful industry practices. The next year that number rose to 27 companies.

Greenpeace videos, alleging that consumer industry palm oil buyers including Unilever contributed to deforestation, had amassed millions of YouTube hits. Environmentalists confronted the chief executive of Kellogg about palm oil purchases from Wilmar on investor calls. And Singapore, the home of Kuok and Wilmar, was covered in ash from plantation fires.

2015 target

Environmentalists are far less critical now. Wilmar and about 30 other firms including Unilever and McDonald’s have pledged by the end of 2015 to buy palm oil that’s certified as coming from sustainable sources. The pledge effectively means no trees, peat land or orangutans were harmed in making the products.

While most the goals are not legally binding, Dave McLaughlin, vice president of Agriculture for the World Wildlife Fund, said the companies are “putting their credibility on the line.”

Global firms “really are exposed on the palm oil issue. It’s difficult, the circumstances and the issues are not easy, but they’re doing it,” he said.

Wilmar’s decision to back causes as diverse as restoring forests and riverbanks, protecting wildlife on the edges of plantations from poachers, and education of migrant workers, have not come about due to the activist pressure, according to Kuok. Being sustainable is good for business, he says.

Fragmented industry

Oil palm trees were introduced to Malaysia at the turn of the 20th century by the British, who brought the West African variety to pretty up the gardens of colonial homes. Today, Indonesia and Malaysia dominate supply.

It’s a fragmented industry consisting of hundreds of large plantations and thousands of plots tendered to by a single family or community.

Reputational hit

Wilmar is testament to one family’s obsession with food. A Chinese immigrant family in British-controlled Malaya, the Kuoks started with a rice and flour shop before current patriarch Robert Kuok rose to be one of the world’s top sugar traders.

Robert’s nephew, Khoon Hong, set up Wilmar with a partner in 1991, growing it to be one of Singapore’s biggest firms with $45 billion in revenue.

Wilmar’s reputation took a hit when the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund sold its stake in the company in 2012. It didn’t specify a reason.

However, in its 2012 annual report, the fund explained the sale of Wilmar and other palm stocks by noting the industry’s role in continued deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia and its view that some companies “by our reckoning produced palm oil unsustainably.”

Number-one target

Matters turned worse in the spring of 2013. Winds carried record volumes of smoke from land-clearing fires at Indonesian plantations. The miasma that visited Singapore set records for air pollution in the city state and blanketed cars with ash, forcing people indoors.

The government wanted answers.

Wilmar stated its case, according to Jeremy Goon, Wilmar’s chief sustainability officer. The company told government officials it had a zero-burning policy. It monitored fires and knew none of these were on its own land, though it couldn’t speak for others, Goon said.

Voice from TV

Amid the public questioning in Singapore about those culpable for the fires, Kuok turned on the television news and saw one activist lay the blame squarely on Wilmar. The company was closing its eyes to murky industry practices, instead of using its clout to enact change, the man argued.

The speaker was Glenn Hurowitz, executive director of Catapult, and one of the strategists behind a year-long attack by a broad collective of NGOs including Climate Advisers and Forest Heroes on the palm industry, with Wilmar as their number-one target.

“I asked myself what we did wrong for us to be so wrongly accused,” Kuok said. Because of Wilmar’s industry position “we were made to look like the biggest villain.”

Wilmar bends Kuok tracked down the activist he saw on TV and fired off a defensive letter. The two began an e-mail exchange and within weeks the tycoon had invited Washington-based Hurowitz to his Singapore office.

Kuok spent the first 15 minutes ranting about NGOs.

“I couldn’t believe I’d flown 24 hours across the world to listen to that,” Hurowitz recalls. Then Kuok calmed down and “treated me like a Chinese uncle.”

The new mood of respect deepened when Wilmar’s chief discovered over a meal in a local Chinese restaurant that his “angry” critic was a vegetarian.

Conversing in English and “rusty”

Mandarin Chinese first picked up as a kid at a Minnesota summer camp, Hurowitz explained that he had quit meat because of the strain rearing animals has on the planet.

“He thought it was an indicator that I was a sincere environmentalist,” Hurowitz says.

According to Kuok, that’s a person who wants to help the planet without ignoring positive aspects of palm development.

Being sincere

Scott Poynton, the founder of environmental group The Forest Trust, soon joined the talks. The activists pushed Kuok to use his industry clout to force all Wilmar suppliers to cease forest cutting, cultivation on peat land, and to champion labor and indigenous tribes’ land rights.

In principle, Kuok agreed, Hurowitz said. After all, Wilmar was already implementing much of the advice at its palm estates. The harder task was getting outside suppliers — including the more than 800 mills that send crude palm oil to its refineries and the thousands of farmers who sell its agents fruit — to do the same.

Already Kuok was starting to feel resistance from “some of the big plantations,” Hurowitz said.

Few of Kuok’s peers shared the tycoon’s fear that NGO campaigns could provoke a consumer pushback and government interventions, factors that would limit palm oil use and hurt prices.

Kuok gathered industry peers in the fall of 2013 to urge everyone to take the plunge together. The talks were joined by Unilever’s chief executive Paul Polman, the world’s biggest palm oil buyer.

Unilever, the maker of Dove soaps and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, had been through its own NGO heat.

Greenpeace had run public and social- media campaigns that scored millions of YouTube views for videos such as “Dove Onslaught(er),” depicting an Indonesian girl amid tree stumps.

A Unilever spokesperson, without discussing the details of the 2013 talks, said that the company believes governments, business and civil society must work together to enact change.

Unilever is pursuing such an approach in palm, soy, paper and beef and plans to widen the focus, the spokesperson said.

“We are working with our key supplier partners, including Wilmar, to drive market transformation,” the spokesperson said by e-mail.

Failure to agree

At the talks Unilever pushed for higher standards, but stopped short of offering to pay more for sustainable products, according to the account of three participants, who asked not to be named because of the closed-door nature of the meeting. Palm companies objected to calls to stop all new plantation development.

The negotiations yielded a Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto, which was denounced by Greenpeace as worthless. Wilmar didn’t even sign it.

Though the talks failed to win widespread industry support, Hurowitz said Kuok was still looking for solutions — ones that would not put him at a disadvantage with competitors.

“He talked a lot about how upset he was at the haze in Singapore and in China,” Hurowitz said. “He just needed to be given a business rationale to go ahead with this, to show that this was a commercial decision.”

The deal

By early December, the momentum seemed to falter and Kuok threatened to call the whole thing off, according to Hurowitz.

On Dec. 4, 2013, Hurowitz and Poynton, Kuok and other Wilmar executives went for dinner to the Szechuan Court & Kitchen at Singapore’s Fairmont hotel, a five-minute drive from Wilmar headquarters.

Seated around a table with a Lazy Susan rotating tray, the party’s mood was tense and the conversation at times descended into shouting, Hurowitz recalls.

Hurowitz and Poynton warned Wilmar palm oil would lose market share as demand for the product in the West crumbled under NGO criticism.

They even threatened to renew all attacks on the industry — but focus on Wilmar alone. And they promised to bring competitors aboard later if Kuok made the first step.

Kuok, said Hurowitz, offered a deal:

Get me Unilever and I’ll sign. If the biggest seller and buyer could make the jump together it would make a splash. And Kuok wouldn’t be alone.

The two campaigners penned an e-mailed letter to Unilever chief executive Polman in the hotel lobby. “We thought this deal could change agriculture,” Hurowitz said.

No reply came. The next morning, the pair received a last- minute invite to visit Unilever’s Four Acres office in Singapore. Resigned to another fruitless run through the issues, they didn’t even bother with jacket and tie.

The UK-Dutch firm’s chief procurement officer at the time, Marc Engel, sat across from them and simply said: We’re in. I’ll call Khoon Hong.

The Unilever spokesperson, who asked not to be named, did not reply to questions about this episode.

Domino effect

In a domino effect, big-brand food and household goods companies from Dunkin’ Donuts to Procter & Gamble and Kellogg joined the movement to buy oil from sources certified as sustainable or, at least, offset purchases with so-called green certificates that compensate the “good” suppliers.

Rival traders Cargill and Golden Agri-Resources made similar pledges to prevent deforestation by their suppliers.

Amid the euphoria, there is a need to remain watchful against backsliding, says Daniel May, a senior manager at the German sustainable palm oil industry group. Myriad production and monitoring challenges must be overcome. Another challenge: Consumers are largely in the dark about the issue. “There is still a long way to go.” May says.

Unilever’s vision is that “the entire industry will move to 100 percent sustainable palm oil” by 2020, the firm’s spokesperson said.

“In a world of finite resources, it makes absolute business sense to source sustainably so we can continue to serve consumers in decades and centuries to come, whilst preserving environments and livelihoods.”

Expansion from palm

Norway’s sovereign fund, which sparked the exodus from palm stocks, is keeping tabs on events.

“To the extent we find that companies improve their practices we may choose to reinvest,” said Marthe Skaar, a spokesperson for Norges Bank Investment Management, which oversees the sovereign fund.

Palm’s makeover bodes well for the whole of agriculture, says Hurowitz.

Cargill vowed in late 2014 to start spreading the lessons learned in palm to all its products.

For Kuok, however, the focus is still firmly on palm oil. In fact, he has argued that production of alternative oilseeds requires even more land and result in more forest clearing.

Wilmar has devoted vast resources since making its pledge in 2013 simply to “educating” its suppliers “that sustainable development is an irreversible trend in the world today,” he says.

Business-minded to the end, he fears palm oil prices will crash if his new alliance with his former critics doesn’t hold.

“If the industry continues business as usual, NGOs will continue to tarnish the reputation of palm oil and governments and consumers will be pressured to restrict the use of palm oil in food, biofuel and so on,” the palm oil king warns.

Bloomberg