After drawing international acclaim, Indonesia’s moratorium on forest clearing has proved hard to implement, as special interests whittle down the area protected under the agreement, environmental groups say.
A year ago this week, Indonesia kick-started plans to radically reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by pledging to stop issuing new forest-clearing permits for two years. But the plan to make millions of hectares of pristine jungle off-limits for development has been hurt by violations, challenges to the agreement and the emergence of numerous forest-clearing permits the central government didn’t know had existed.
Environmentalists are calling for better legislation, tougher enforcement and an extension of the moratorium.
Overall, Indonesian officials say, about 60 million hectares of forest are subject to the moratorium—a major achievement in a country long known as having one of the world’s fastest deforestation rates, but less than what some had hoped to achieve. The exact amount of land under protection is disputed, and may be getting smaller as more exemptions to the moratorium are allowed, environmentalists say.
Last year, the country drafted a map showing areas that fell under the plan, but individuals and corporations with claims on different tracts of land came forward to dispute it. As a result, millions of hectares of forest have been moved off the protected list.
So many clearing permits were issued over the years by different levels of government that Jakarta still doesn’t know exactly who holds unused claims. The map has been redrawn every six months to keep up with disputes. The version drawn late last year showed close to five million hectares reclassified as unprotected because of previous permits, mostly to make way for palm-oil plantations, said Daniel Murdiyarso, a Jakarta-based senior scientist for the Center for International Forestry Research.
“My impression is more [exceptions] will be revealed” with every new map, he said. “The most important thing to do in the second year is improve governance” to prevent legal loopholes and local officials from opening new spaces for clearing.
Enforcement of the clearing ban in far-flung provinces and deep jungles has been particularly difficult, with cutting and burning continuing in some supposedly protected areas.
“The moratorium has been breached many times in its first year,” said Hapsoro, director of Forest Watch Indonesia, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name. “The two-year limit needs to be extended to allow the moratorium to be strengthened and improved.”
Indonesia’s forest-protection project was announced with fanfare at a conference in Oslo in 2010. The government aim is to reduce the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 26 per cent by 2020, through the moratorium and through increased forest-monitoring efforts. It could slash emissions by as much as 41 per cent if richer countries give more support, the government said.
The clearing of peat and forest land for industry—including paper and palm-oil production—is important to growth in Southeast Asia’s largest economy, but makes Indonesia one of the world’s top sources of greenhouse gases.
Huge amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the air when forests and peat lands are cut down and burned. In tropical developing countries like Indonesia, most greenhouse gases come from forest clearing rather than automobiles or industry.
Norway has pledged to pay Indonesia as much as $1 billion for proven emissions reductions—a test of whether international incentives can persuade developing countries to risk crimping economic growth to help the environment. Government officials in Indonesia and Norway, as well as some environmentalists, say the moratorium is only the beginning, meant to give officials time to write rules and build institutions to better monitor and protect pristine forest.
“We are impressed by Indonesia. We think the moratorium has been a breakthrough in terms of transparency in the forest sector,” said Bård Vegar Solhjell, Norway’s environment minister. “We have also seen significant change in policy debate around land usage.”
Supporters of the plan say much of the criticism is only possible because of new disclosures by the government connected to how Indonesia’s forests are being exploited. The government’s map, for example, has made it easier for environmental groups to see changes in forest status and has helped the groups report violations of the moratorium.
The moratorium still represents a crucial change in the way Indonesia thinks about and protects its lush jungles, said Agus Purnomo, head of the secretariat for Indonesia’s National Council on Climate Change. “You can’t say that we are not succeeding or not achieve something here,” he said.
Many environmentalists beg to differ. They say moratorium has brought the issue to the forefront and has given advocates more information about what is happening in the jungles, but it also has exposed the plan’s loopholes and a lack of enforcement.
“President [Susilo Bambang] Yudhoyono’s moratorium commitment to protect our remaining natural forests and peat lands is being undermined by weak legislation and weak enforcement,” said Bernadinus Steni, program manager of Indonesia’s Association for Community and Ecologically Based Law Reform. “The first year of the moratorium provides little extra protection for forests or carbon-rich peat lands.”
