Battling Deforestation In Indonesia, One Firm At A Time

National Public Radio (NPR)

By Anthony Kuhn  3/31

Listen to NPR’s story here.

On the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a backhoe stacks freshly cut trees to be made into pulp and paper, or APP, is Indonesia’s largest papermaker, and the company and its suppliers operate vast plantations of acacia trees here that have transformed the local landscape.

APP has sold billions of dollars’ worth of paper products to Staples, Disney and other big U.S. corporations. But environmental groups have accused APP of causing deforestation, destroying the habitat of Sumatran tigers and orangutans, and trampling on the rights of forest dwellers.

Asril Amran is the head of a nearby village. He says that the plantations have ruined the local environment.

“In the past we could go into the forest and catch deer. We could look for birds,” he recalls. “But now, there is nothing, as you can see. No animal can live in the acacia forest. We cannot shelter in its shade. It’s hot. It’s a greedy tree — it uses up a lot of water.”

The says that APP has turned an area of rain forests the size of Massachusetts into pulpwood plantations. It estimates that by cutting down forests and burning peat land, APP spewed into the atmosphere in 2006. That would rank APP’s emissions ahead of 165 countries, as measured by those countries’ emissions as measured in 2006.

Two years ago, the environmental group .

They , makers of the Barbie doll. In , Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken, learns that Barbie’s packaging is causing deforestation.

In response, Ken dumps her. Barbie sits on her couch in a huff, wearing her Day-Glo spandex.

“I’m Barbie,” she says. “As long as I look good, who cares about tigers in some distant rain forest? If Mattel wants to use wood from Indonesia’s rain forests to make my box, then let them do it.”

The campaign and others like it worked. Companies stopped buying APP’s products, and APP’s profits plummeted.

APP felt the criticism was unfair. After all, they said, they were building schools and conservation programs for local communities.

APP Managing Director for Sustainability Aida Greenbury says her company and the NGOs that were criticizing it were just not talking on the same wavelength.

“We addressed climate change by trying to implement sustainable practice in our forestry, so we have tried our best to address those. But there’s always something missing, as if we were talking on two different frequencies.”

So the company turned to Scott Poynton, a lanky Australian who runs the Tropical Forest Trust.

Poynton told them bluntly that if they kept cutting down virgin forests, no amount of “greenwashing” was going to help them.

“I was just like: You guys are not listening. Your whole business is going down the drain; you’ve got customers leaving you every two seconds; you think you’re doing a good job; and you’ve missed the point,” he says.

Corporate Targets

Greenpeace and Poynton’s good cop/bad cop tactics worked. In February, APP’s chairman announced that his company would stop cutting down natural forests.

Poynton says that APP’s managers just needed help in seeing that their business model was outdated.

“The context in which they’re operating has changed, and with the questions of climate change, cutting down forests is not cool,” Poynton says. “And people don’t want deforestation in their products.”

Environmentalists say the APP case shows the importance of big corporations in driving deforestation, and stopping it.

“Sure, consumers want stuff, they use stuff. But the corporations are the ones that determine often, or try to influence what you perceive that you need, and what you perceive are the things that you want to buy,” says Lafcadio Cortesi, an activist with the Rainforest Action Network. “And so that’s one of the reasons that we focus on large corporate consumers rather than individuals.”

Greenpeace Indonesia activist Yuyun Indradi welcomes APP’s new policy. But he says that if APP goes back on its pledge, Greenpeace will restart its campaign. He adds that APP is only the first step in a bigger fight against deforestation.

“Our target is zero deforestation in Indonesia by 2015,” Indradi says. “Yes, I think it’s quite ambitious. But APP’s pledge helps to lighten our burden in reaching that goal.”

He says Greenpeace is now trying to persuade other papermakers to follow APP’s example.

 

 

Making the right choice on Indonesia’s forest moratorium

Dino Patti Djalal and Andrew Steer, Washington, DC | Opinion | Sun, June 02 2013

The Jakarta Post

Ending months of uncertainty, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia made a courageous decision last week to extend the country’s forest moratorium. The new Presidential Instruction adds another two years of protection for over 43 million hectares of primary forests and peat land — an area the size of Japan.

This was a bold decision by a leader known for his commitment to sustainability. Extending the moratorium is a victory for the Indonesian people, business, and the planet.

The moratorium will directly benefit more than 80 million Indonesians who rely on forests for their livelihood. Many of these people are extremely poor and have struggled to gain recognition for their land rights. Extending the moratorium provides an opportunity to address these crucial issues.

Fears that the moratorium would hurt the economy are unfounded. Smallholder and industrial forestry, along with pulp and paper production, depend on forests, and contribute approximately US$21 billion to the economy — around 3.5 percent of Indonesia’s GDP. More than 4 million people are employed by this industry.

Furthermore, Indonesia is emerging as a world-class agricultural powerhouse. It’s already the world’s top producer of palm oil, used in countless consumer products, and is one of the largest rice producers. Limiting forest loss makes agriculture more sustainable by protecting key watersheds and limiting erosion.

Indonesia seeks to significantly increase production of 15 major commodity crops in coming years, including doubling palm oil production by 2020. If left unchecked, expanding palm oil production will increase pressure on the environment and local communities. Under the old model, valuable forest land would be cleared to make way for new plantations. With the moratorium in place, producers will be encouraged to intensify production on
existing land.

Palm oil producers have the potential to increase yields from the 3.5 tons to potentially 8 tons per hectare though better management and new breeds of oil palm trees. WRI research shows ample opportunities to use already degraded land for sustainable palm oil development. For the province of Kalimantan alone, there is around 14 million hectares of degraded land that is available for such a purpose.

Furthermore, the moratorium will help Indonesian companies gain access to preferred global markets, which are increasingly committed to buying “deforestation-free” commodities. That’s why the association of Palm Oil Farmers Union (SPKS), an association of smallholders, publically supported the moratorium.

Other business groups are working to advance sustainable palm oil efforts–and preventing deforestation is central to that effort. For instance, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) works with major companies to enter global markets by offering sustainability certification for palm oil growers and suppliers.

Fifteen percent of palm oil currently receives certification from the RSPO, and recent commitments from major companies like Godrej, Ruchi Soya, Wilmar, Kamani Oil Industries, and WF Limited demonstrate growing interest in this approach. A recent commitment from Asia Pulp and Paper to stop clearing natural forests similarly shows new thinking by industry.

President Yudhoyono’s leadership sends an important signal well beyond Indonesia’s borders that protecting forests is both an ecologically and economically smart strategy. Other countries are making a similar calculation: Brazil declared a moratorium on clearing forests for soy cultivation in 2006.

Since then, soy production has expanded, even as Brazil’s deforestation rate dropped by 80 percent. This was the lowest level in a quarter century. In Africa, countries like Gabon and Niger are taking innovative approaches to improve forest governance and restore lost trees.

Certainly the extension of the moratorium is not the end of the story. The new law needs to be implemented more effectively than its predecessor. The government should strengthen its efficacy though better technical guidance and outreach at the local level; improved monitoring and enforcement; and better cooperation among ministries. With the new moratorium in place, these reforms can continue.

It’s not every day that world leaders make the right decisions on tough choices. President Yudhoyono’s stance will enhance his reputation as a champion for sustainability — and moreover will benefit people across Indonesia and beyond.

Dino Patti Djalal is Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to the United States and Dr. Andrew Steer is president and CEO of the World Resources Institute.

Aceh Government and CSO Coalition Discussed New Spatial Plan

Released by the Norweigan Embassy. Updated 5/31

Norway, through its REDD+ initiative, has been perceived as a strategic actor of forestry issues in Indonesia. Therefore, the Embassy has received thousands of e-mails from people worrying about the future of Aceh’s forest if the new spatial plan proposed by the Aceh government is implemented. Please see previous article ‘Ambassador replies to petition for saving Aceh’s forest’. The petition claims that if the new spatial plan is implemented, it will “reduce the total forest cover of Aceh from its existing coverage of about 68 per cent of Aceh’s total land area, to just 45 per cent.” This represents a loss of more than 1,200,000 hectares of forests, and would include the destruction of areas inside of the Leuser Ecosystem, a National Strategic Area for its Environmental Protection Function that is protected by National Spatial Planning Law 26/2007 and Government Regulation 26/2008.”

The issue has been debated over local, national and international media but both CSOs and the Governor and his team have not had a chance to discuss technicalities of the proposed spatial plan. The Embassy in Jakarta facilitated a meeting between both parties on Wednesday, 22nd May 2013 at the Embassy office to exchange information and to share understanding over the new spatial plan. Aceh Government was represented by Governor Dr. Zaini Abdullah, Wali Nanggroe Aceh Mr. Malik Mahmud, and team from Bappeda (Regional Development Planning Agency) and Regional Forestry Agency. CSO Coalition was represented by Greenpeace Indonesia and Norway, WALHI, AMAN, ICEL and Forest Watch Indonesia. The meeting was also attended by representatives from the national REDD+ task force.

World’s largest REDD project finally approved in Indonesia

The 64,000-hectare forest carbon project is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 119m tonnes over its 30-year life-span 

Mongabay, part of the Guardian Environmental Network  5/31

Rimba Raya, the world’s largest REDD+ project, has finally been approved by the Indonesian government and verified under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), a leading certification standard for carbon credits.

The 64,000-hectare forest carbon project in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan Province on the island of Borneo is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 119 million tons over its 30-year life-span. The emissions reductions will come from avoiding drainage of area’s carbon dense peatlands and conversion of its forests to oil palm plantations.

According to SCS Global Services, the auditor that verified the project’s carbon accounting, Rimba Raya reduced emissions by 2.1 million tons between July 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010, resulting in the largest-ever number of Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) generated in a single year.

“The Rimba Raya project has undergone a lengthy and complex review process,” said Dr. Robert J. Hrubes, SCS Executive Vice President, in a press release. “The scale of this project is truly precedent setting, demonstrating a strong market value in preserving forests.”

Verification came after the Ministry of Forestry signed off on the project. Lack of government approval had kept Rimba Raya in limbo for three years. During that time, the conservation concession was reduced from 90,000 ha to less than 64,000 ha, threatening the viability of the project, which had been developed by InfiniteEARTH.

Now that the project has been approved — Indonesia’s first officially sanctioned REDD+ project — supporters say it will help protect critical habitat for endangered orangutans.

“Rimba Raya will be one of the most important Orangutan conservation projects in the world,” said Birute Mary Galdikas of the conservation group, Orangutan Foundation International, which is a beneficiary of the project. “It is nothing less than the promise of survival for the endangered orangutan.”

Now approved, Rimba Raya may provide a green light to other REDD+ project developers in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Rimba Raya’s backers, including Russian energy giant Gazprom and the insurance firm Allianz, can now sell tradable carbon credits in the voluntary carbon market. Credits in the voluntary carbon market are typically used by companies to “offset” their greenhouse gas emissions for corporate social responsibility programs, rather than complying with climate regulations.

Government to revoke concessions in customary forests

By Prodita Sabarini, The Jakarta Post   3/29

The government has said it will revoke business permits it has given to companies operating in customary forests after the Constitutional Court annulled its ownership of customary forests.

Forestry Ministry’s secretary general, Hadi Daryanto, said on Monday that the government would rescind all plantation and mining concessions that have been granted to businesses in customary forests that have been legally recognized by the local administrations.

“We’ll get them [businesses] out. Even if there’s a concession for HTI [industrial forest permits] or HPH [production forest concessions] as long as there’s a bylaw then the businesses will have to leave,” Hadi said.

However, as of now, no regional administration has issued a bylaw on customary forests.

The court last week decided to scrap the word “state” from Article 1 of the 1999 Forestry Law, which says “customary forests are state forests located in the areas of custom-based communities.”

The court also ruled that the government had to recognize indigenous communities’ ownership of customary forests, saying that “indigenous peoples have the right to own and exploit their customary forests to meet their daily need.”

The ruling has been seen as a victory for the indigenous people, who have long had their rights to make a living by making productive use of their forests denied by the state.

Indigenous People’s Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) secretary general Abdon Nababan said that relying on regional administrations to issue a bylaw on customary forests without a directive from the central government will risk reducing the court’s ruling to that of a paper tiger.

He doubted that it was financially feasible to have customary forests recognized through a bylaw.

“There can be dozens of customary forests in one regency. Will this regency have dozens of bylaws on customary forests? The cost to stipulate one bylaw in a regency is between Rp 400 million (US$40,850) to 700 million. If there are around 10 identified customary forests, it would cost between Rp 4 billion to Rp 10 billion to recognize customary forests in one regency,” Abdon said.

“And it’s proven that for 14 years since the passing of the Forestry Law, not one customary forest has been recognized,” he said.

Abdon said the president should release a decree for a registration mechanism of indigenous people communities and customary forests to start the restitution process of indigenous peoples’ forests.

Currently there is no official government data on the number of existing indigenous communities and the size and territory of their customary land and forests.

A civil society led mapping of indigenous land by The Participative Mapping Working Network (JKPP) has documented 3.9 million hectares of indigenous land, of which 3.1 million hectares are forest areas, JKPP coordinator Kasmita Widodo said.

JKPP has submitted their preliminary mapping of 2.4 million hectares of customary forests to the Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4), currently working on an integrated map of Indonesia.

Nirarta Samadi, the UKP4 Deputy and Chair of the REDD+ Task Force Working Group on Forest Monitoring, said that the reason there have not yet been any bylaws recognizing customary forests was due to the previous status of customary forests as state forest. “Now we have an opportunity for a new process,” he said referring to the MK ruling. “It feels right now to use the avenue of bylaws and a political decision is indeed needed to create a positive atmosphere,” he said.

Hadi said that it was the ministry’s task to draft a government regulation to force local administrations to acknowledge customary forests in bylaws.

Government to revoke concessions in customary forests

By Prodita Sabarini, The Jakarta Post   3/29

The government has said it will revoke business permits it has given to companies operating in customary forests after the Constitutional Court annulled its ownership of customary forests.

Forestry Ministry’s secretary general, Hadi Daryanto, said on Monday that the government would rescind all plantation and mining concessions that have been granted to businesses in customary forests that have been legally recognized by the local administrations.

“We’ll get them [businesses] out. Even if there’s a concession for HTI [industrial forest permits] or HPH [production forest concessions] as long as there’s a bylaw then the businesses will have to leave,” Hadi said.

However, as of now, no regional administration has issued a bylaw on customary forests.

The court last week decided to scrap the word “state” from Article 1 of the 1999 Forestry Law, which says “customary forests are state forests located in the areas of custom-based communities”.

The court also ruled that the government had to recognize indigenous communities’ ownership of customary forests, saying that “indigenous peoples have the right to own and exploit their customary forests to meet their daily need.”

The ruling has been seen as a victory for the indigenous people, who have long had their rights to make a living by making productive use of their forests denied by the state.

Indigenous People’s Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) secretary general Abdon Nababan said that relying on regional administrations to issue a bylaw on customary forests without a directive from the central government will risk reducing the court’s ruling to that of a paper tiger.

He doubted that it was financially feasible to have customary forests recognized through a bylaw.

“There can be dozens of customary forests in one regency. Will this regency have dozens of bylaws on customary forests? The cost to stipulate one bylaw in a regency is between Rp 400 million (US$40,850) to 700 million. If there are around 10 identified customary forests, it would cost between Rp 4 billion to Rp 10 billion to recognize customary forests in one regency,” Abdon said.

“And it’s proven that for 14 years since the passing of the Forestry Law, not one customary forest has been recognized,” he said.

Abdon said the president should release a decree for a registration mechanism of indigenous people communities and customary forests to start the restitution process of indigenous peoples’ forests.

Currently there is no official government data on the number of existing indigenous communities and the size and territory of their customary land and forests.

A civil society led mapping of indigenous land by The Participative Mapping Working Network (JKPP) has documented 3.9 million hectares of indigenous land, of which 3.1 million hectares are forest areas, JKPP coordinator Kasmita Widodo said.

JKPP has submitted their preliminary mapping of 2.4 million hectares of customary forests to the Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4), currently working on an integrated map of Indonesia.

Nirarta Samadi, the UKP4 Deputy and Chair of the REDD+ Task Force Working Group on Forest Monitoring, said that the reason there have not yet been any bylaws recognizing customary forests was due to the previous status of customary forests as state forest. “Now we have an opportunity for a new process,” he said referring to the MK ruling. “It feels right now to use the avenue of bylaws and a political decision is indeed needed to create a positive atmosphere,” he said.

Hadi said that it was the ministry’s task to draft a government regulation to force local administrations to acknowledge customary forests in bylaws.

Indonesia extends logging moratorium, but questions remain

An excavator is seen in a destroyed forest at a peatland area in Kuala Tripa district in Indonesia’s Aceh province on December 20, 2011. REUTERS/Roni Bintang

By Fidelis E. Satriastanti  5/30

JAKARTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Activists have lauded a decision by Indonesia’s president to extend a moratorium on new logging licenses, calling it a historic move in the struggle to save the country’s forests and cut carbon emissions. But some experts say the new policy doesn’t go far enough and will do little to fix Indonesia’s chaotic forest management.

On May 13, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed a new presidential instruction, known as the Forest and Peat Land Moratorium. It seeks to protect primary forest and peat land — both major stores of carbon — by suspending the issuing of any new forest-clearing permits.

The two-year moratorium, which serves as an extension of a previous presidential instruction which expired on May 20, is directed at various governmental officials including the ministers of forestry and home affairs and the head of geo-spatial information as well as all of the country’s governors and mayors.

Together they oversee the world’s third largest tropical forest, home to some of the world’s most endangered species, in a country that is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And, according to the Ministry of Environment, the forestry industry and the destruction and degradation of peat lands are responsible for around 80 percent of those emissions.

ENFORCEMENT QUESTIONED

But the problem, say some experts, is a lack of enforcement behind the moratorium. “Why it is just a presidential instruction? There are no sanctions for those who do not comply,” says Bambang Hero Saharjo, dean of the forest faculty at Bogor Agricultural University. “Why not use a much more legally binding (policy), such as government regulation or law?”

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, head of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) task force responsible for overseeing the implementation of the new presidential instruction, defends the extension of the moratorium, saying it is the most efficient way to ensure the continuation of the policy.

“It’s about being practical,” he says. “It will take longer to process a legally binding policy.”

Mangkusubroto says the instruction can be used to tackle the management issues that Saharjo and other critics point to. Besides continuing its work on integrating all of the varied — and sometimes conflicting — maps of Indonesia’s forests and peat lands currently being used by different ministries and institutions, he says the task force is preparing to launch a REDD+ agency, which will focus on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation as a part of Indonesia’s commitment to cut emissions by 26 percent by 2020.

“The most important thing is to fix how we manage our forestry sector,” he says.

One of the moratorium’s goals may be to reduce emissions, but according to Nyoman N. Suryadiputra, director of the Wetlands International Indonesia Program (WIIP), that is not working because the restrictions affect only new permits. “Previous permits are still in effect and still (causing) emissions,” he says.

Experts say Indonesia has approximately 25 million hectares of peat land, nearly half of it already degraded. Based on WIIP findings, in 2011 alone, another 3.5 million hectares of peat land was converted into oil palm plantations, Suryadiputra says. The program estimates that peat degradation and losses will result in emissions of 735 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2020.

That figure is far higher than the 560 million tons projected by Indonesia’s National Action Plan on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. “And that’s only emissions from peat lands and palm oil,” Suryadiputra says. “We have yet to talk about (emissions resulting from) forest fires or other land-use changes.”

EVALUATING THE IMPACT

However Hermono Sigit, assistant deputy at the environment ministry’s department of Inland Water Ecosystem Damage Control, says the moratorium has helped protect Indonesia’s peat lands by spurring on the creation of stronger legislation.

“The Ministry of Environment is finalising government regulation on peat lands management, which includes water management, rehabilitation and restoration efforts,” he says. He explained that the regulation had been drafted several years ago but was stuck in policymaking limbo until the moratorium was passed in 2011.

Now with the moratorium keeping the number of land-clearing permits constant, the ministry can better evaluate the impact the existing permits have on carbon dioxide emissions, Sigit said.

Yuyu Rahayu, director of inventory and monitoring of forest resources at the Forestry Ministry, also applauds the moratorium, saying it has helped cut the deforestation rate from 1.125 million hectares per year in 2000-2005 to around 450,000 hectares per year in 2009-2011.

But forestry expert Saharjo slams the claim that the moratorium has had any impact, since by the time it was implemented in 2011 the rate of deforestation was already in decline.

He says that for real change to happen, the new moratorium needs to broaden its reach and cover not only logging, but other sectors that contribute to forest and peat land destruction, such as mining and farming.

“The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources and the Ministry of Agriculture should fall under the instruction because those two commodities overlap with forestry and cause many problems,” he says. “Without sitting down with those two institutions, it will be difficult to sort out solutions for our forests.”

Fidelis E Satriastanti, based in Jakarta, writes on climate change and environmental issues.