Aceh Forest and Environment News

Indonesia Defends Palm Plantations

noreply@blogger.com (Aceh Forest) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:48:29 PST

[The Jakarta Globe] Copenhagen. Indonesian delegates on Wednesday night promoted the country’s palm oil industry as sustainable at the UN climate talks, in the wake of a recently-published Greenpeace report accusing Indonesia’s largest palm oil producer of deception and illegal

practices.

Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta said Indonesia would cut its emissions 9.6 percent by making palm oil plantations more sustainable. That is a sizable chunk of its much-lauded recent commitment to slash emissions by 26 percent before 2020.

A 2009 decree on environmental protection would use law enforcement and improved technology and management to ensure the “development of oil palm will be sustainable and will not harm efforts in anticipating climate change, and will reduce carbon dioxide,” Hatta said at a press conference.

A recently-released Greenpeace report accused Indonesia’s largest palm oil producer, Sinar Mas, of flouting environmental and social standards while “crafting an illusion of commitment to sustainability”.

The report said the pulp, paper and palm oil conglomerate was clearing land without permits and in deep peat. It accused Sinar Mas of violating Indonesian law and the standards of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry group the company belongs to.

Hatta said on the sidelines of the press briefing that a delegation from the forestry and environment ministries had been sent to observe Sinar Mas. While some of the reports’ claims could be accurate, he said, “it seems to me that they practice sustainable development for forestry.”

Agriculture Minister Suswono said that despite “mismanagement in the past”, the focus in the future would be on raising the productivity of existing palm oil plantations, rather than the converting more forests into plantations.

Asked whether a law would be passed to enforce this policy, Hatta said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had ordered all governors of Indonesian provinces to follow it.

“As a developing country, Indonesia needs to use its land and all natural resources to provide people with better revenue,” Suswono said, adding that palm oil industry had provided the financial means for food, infrastructure and electricity in underdeveloped regions.

Indonesia has 18 million hectares of land suitable for oil palm, Hatta said, with seven million hectares occupied by palm oil plantations in 2009. Small farmers owned 40 percent of that figure, he added. []

CPO Exports From Indonesia Could Grow 10% Under Indian Trade Deal

noreply@blogger.com (Aceh Forest) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:39:49 PST

[The Jakarta Globe] The volume of crude palm oil exports to India is expected to rise by 10 percent next year, thanks to the Asean-India Free Trade Agreement, according to a commerce promotion body.

Under the deal, which is due to be signed at this week’s Asean Economic Ministerial Meeting in Bangkok, India is required to gradually cut its import duty on CPO between 2010 and 2019, from 80 percent at present to 37.5 percent. In the case of refined palm oil, the tariff is to be cut from 90 percent to 45 percent.

Derom Bangun, vice president of the Indonesian Palm Oil Board, said that lower import duties would give Indonesia a chance to significantly grow its CPO exports to India as palm oil became more competitive with other vegetable oils, like soybean oil.

“Our export volume to India may increase next year by about 10 percent over the average if India reduces its import duty on CPO to a maximum of 37.5 percent,” Derom said on the sidelines of a roundtable on sustainable palm oil production on Tuesday.

India is one of Indonesia’s principal markets for CPO, along with China, with some 30 percent of the country’s 12 million tons of exported CPO being shipped to the subcontinent last year.

India’s demand for food oils amounts to some 12 million tons annually. With a maximum annual production of only six million tons, it is forced to get the remainder from abroad.

“They import between 6 million and 6.5 million tons of food oils a year, consisting of soybean, rapeseed and palm oils,” Derom said. On average, he added, India imported about five million tons of CPO per year, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia.

“To date, India has been strong in protecting their home market from fluctuations in food oil prices by imposing high import duties at harvest time,” Derom said. “If they gradually reduce their duties on CPO between 2010 and 2019, this will enable our CPO to compete with soybean oil.”

Derom also said CPO prices had started to rise in mid-July. The commodity at Belawan harbor in North Sumatra stood at Rp 6,479 ($65 cents) a kilogram on July 24, he said, but this had increased to Rp 7,438 a kg on Monday.

“Prices are ideal at present,” he said. “Given the current price at Belawan, the price in Rotterdam will range between $700 and $750 a ton. We don’t want to go back to widely fluctuating prices, at was the case in 2008.”

However, Derom warned that with drought likely to be on the horizon as a result of El Nino, the CPO price in Rotterdam could hit $800 a ton over the coming months.

The nation is expected to produce 20.3 million tons of palm oil this year, up from 19 million tons last year.

Of this year’s production, some seven million tons will be used to supply the domestic market, mostly for cooking oil, while the remaining 12 million tons will be exported.

Indonesia’s exports to India have soared from $2.1 billion in 2004 to $7.06 billion last year. The country’s imports from India, meanwhile, rose from $1.05 billion in 2004 to $2.51 billion in 2008, meaning that Indonesia’s $1.05 billion trade surplus with the country in 2004 rose to $4.55 billion last year. []

Climate change and forestry analysis: REDD is the new green

noreply@blogger.com (Aceh Forest) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:31:52 PST

MARK ROSE, chief executive of pioneering international conservation organisation Fauna & Flora International, answers the critics of plans for the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation mechanism and explains why it must be given a chance to work if we are to avert catastrophic climate change.

World leaders meet in Copenhagen in December to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

For the first time, the new climate agreement is likely to include provisions to reduce the damaging greenhouse gas emissions that result from habitat destruction.

There are many voices of support for the proposed mechanism to achieve this - known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation or ‘REDD’ - not least within the UN itself. But not everyone is convinced that REDD is the new green.

Until now conservationists have failed to make a strong enough case for including emissions from habitat destruction in the global climate treaty, perhaps because the case seemed so obvious!

How could anyone possibly ignore the massive impact that deforestation and wider habitat destruction has on carbon dioxide emission levels?

The Copenhagen COP presents the world with an opportunity to rectify this glaring omission and make an immense contribution to global efforts to combat change.

There is understandably much debate about precisely how this will be included in the COP. Rewarding countries and communities for not destroying their forests is a complex business.

It is essential that negotiators at Copenhagen get it right to prevent REDD from falling at the first hurdle.

However, some of the voices of concern are even suggesting that REDD should not be pursued and that energies should be focused elsewhere.

Some argue that focusing on deforestation in developing countries reduces pressure on developed countries to cut their own emissions. In other words, that REDD lets the polluters off the hook.

They are missing the point. Protection of forests and other carbon storing habitats is not an alternative to Annex I countries reducing their own domestic emissions.

The two go hand-in-hand. I’m all in favour of pressurising countries and corporates to put their own house in order, but here’s the thing: deforestation accounts for a jaw-dropping 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transport sector.

Can anyone suggest another way of cutting emissions by 20% in one fell swoop?

This is an unrepeatable opportunity to keep the world’s remaining forests standing, with positive results for people, wildlife and the health of the planet as a whole.

Potential big impact

REDD has the potential to generate millions of tons of emission reductions annually.

There are concerns that such a significant volume of credits could ‘flood’ the market, depressing carbon prices to the extent that incentives to invest and develop in clean-energy technologies will be reduced.

Readily available mechanisms to prevent flooding include reducing the supply of REDD credits, increasing demand by simultaneously introducing REDD credits and imposing tighter global targets for emissions reductions, and using a dual market approach to avoid crashing the price of credits.

Moreover, if US climate change legislation is passed, there will be a potential annual demand for one billion tons of international offsets.

Could REDD jeopardise some countries’ economic development by requiring them to forgo opportunities derived from activities such as agriculture and timber production?

Not if we apply the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’, which requires that wealthy countries take the lead in emission reductions while offering incentives to developing countries to follow suit.

The latter will only participate and agree to stem deforestation if it is in their interests, but they are increasingly aware that natural capital is just as vital as economic capital.

They themselves must decide whether the benefits offered through a forest carbon mechanism outweigh the costs of reining in deforestation. It is up to us to make the offer as attractive as possible.

International forest carbon policies currently focus on rewarding countries that are losing forests, not those that have been good stewards.

Progress needs rewarding

Policies geared towards reducing deforestation rates do little to help countries with low rates of deforestation. There is a perverse incentive for previously responsible governments to start logging with a vengeance today in order to reap the benefits of REDD tomorrow.

This is a real concern, but one solution would be to look beyond historic rates of deforestation at predicted future deforestation rates. Such an approach would provide some incentives for high-forest-cover countries to remain that way.

The integrity of REDD, and the effectiveness of the climate regime as a whole, is in danger of being compromised by the inclusion of the ‘sustainable forest management’ concept.

The term is so poorly defined and open to interpretation that it leaves a loophole wide enough to drive a logging truck through. In practice, it is a euphemism for highly destructive activities such as industrial-scale timber extraction.

This is a valid concern, but REDD provides the opportunity to break the cycle of destruction and place an economic value on the role of standing forests.

It must support alternatives to industrial logging that bring lasting and sustainable development benefits and ensure ecosystem resilience.

The main objectives of REDD should be to protect primary forests, restore degraded forests and support the development of activities based on non-timber forest products, payment for ecosystem services and small-scale, community-based harvesting.

Bali follow-on

Anyone who attended the Bali conference could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that forests were just sticks of carbon.

If REDD ignores the wider importance of forests and other ecosystems beyond their carbon storage value, biodiversity will fall through the cracks.

International policy is in danger of encouraging a one-dimensional approach to REDD, leaving other biologically rich ecosystems exposed to degradation or destruction. FFI’s own priority is to develop REDD projects that deliver carbon, community and biodiversity benefits – and we are showing how this can be done.

We believe that projects must include appropriate enforcement and monitoring for biodiversity, alongside any carbon focused forest-stock activities.

Indigenous peoples and rights-based organisations are among the strongest critics of the REDD process.

They maintain that international forest carbon activities could adversely affect indigenous and other forest-dependent people by restricting their access to forests and resources.

Emotive words like exploitation, resettlement and disenfranchisement help to conjure a less than flattering vision of the likely impact of REDD, but it is misguided to assume that such negative outcomes are inevitable.

At FFI, we are proceeding on the basis that human rights are the number one priority.

Without the full participation and agreement of forest-dependent communities in the decision-making process, REDD is a complete non-starter.

Any disputes over land rights, for example, must be resolved in favour of forest and indigenous communities through clear and binding legislation.

The same is true of revenue sharing, which must be made equitable to ensure that a select few do not profit from REDD at the expense of local communities.

The opportunities far outweigh the risks; with the appropriate safeguards in place, the revenue generated could be directed towards poverty alleviation and development programmes, and could also flow directly to those living in forests.

Already happening

FFI is already demonstrating the feasibility of this approach in the Indonesian province of Aceh, Sumatra, where ‘avoided deforestation’ initiatives are contributing to post-tsunami recovery.

REDD’s detractors point to the potential risks posed by corruption, sharp practice and vested interests, but we mustn’t allow such moral hazards to deter us from aiming high. They simply underline the need for transparency, accountability and rigorous standards of accounting.

Similarly, REDD needs to be implemented by disinterested parties, rather than by institutions representing the interests of shareholders or trustees in developed countries.

If REDD is to be credible, provision must be made to ensure adequate monitoring of how countries are implementing the scheme and insuring against abuse.

Governance is without doubt a critical part of the effort to bring international forest carbon into climate policy, and there is little question that some tropical forest nations have poor track records in the area of forest governance.

A well-structured international forest carbon policy could, however, provide a powerful incentive for reform.

First, and perhaps most important, the basic idea of performance-based payments for forest protection means that the money will not flow unless and until performance has been demonstrated.

If there is evidence of destruction, payments will be adjusted accordingly. We need to ensure that funds are available to support the development of effective governance.

The monumental challenge of climate change cannot be tackled with simple, ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions. It will demand a plethora of different approaches, some of which require a pioneering spirit and a sizeable stomach for risk.

REDD is no silver bullet, but it represents a golden opportunity.

At FFI, rather than sitting back and speculating whether it will work, we are out in the field focusing our energies proving that it can.

We’re working with local communities; talking with national governments and collaborating with players from the international financial markets to give REDD every possible chance of delivering a greener, healthier planet. []

Sources: Ethicalcorp

How Protecting the Jungle Can Help Combat Global Warming

noreply@blogger.com (Aceh Forest) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 06:58:21 PST

By Andrew Marshall / Ulu Masen / Time Magazine

There are two important things to know about tracking wild elephants, and it's better to learn both of them before you're actually in the jungle, tracking wild elephants. First, elephants are fast. In thick forest — in this case, the vast Ulu Masen ecosystem in the Indonesian province of Aceh, where leeches writhe beneath your feet and white-handed gibbons hoot from the treetops — they can outpace even deer. Second, elephants can't climb trees. This is good, because that's precisely what you're meant to do if one of them charges.

Or at least that's the advice of the jungle- hardened rangers who patrol just one corner of this 1.9 million – acre (7,700 sq km) wilderness. They are trained by the London-based conservation group Fauna and Flora International (FFI) to protect Ulu Masen from illegal loggers and poachers, who greedily eye its valuable hardwoods and teeming wildlife: elephants, gibbons, tigers, leopards, bears, pythons and scaly anteaters. The rangers' work might seem remote from the modern world, but it has implications far beyond Ulu Masen's frontiers — from Africa and the Amazon, which along with Indonesia are home to what's left of our rain forests, to the meeting rooms of Copenhagen, where thousands of delegates will arrive for next month's historic climate-change conference.

Green plants use light to transform carbon dioxide, absorbed from the atmosphere, and water into organic compounds, with oxygen as a by-product. The process is called photosynthesis, and it enables forests like Ulu Masen to play a critical role in regulating our climate. Forests store an estimated 300 billion tons of carbon, or the equivalent of 40 times the world's total annual greenhouse-gas emissions — emissions that cause global warming. Destroy the trees and you release that carbon into the atmosphere, putting the great challenge of our age — averting catastrophic climate change — beyond reach. Forest destruction accounts for 15% of global emissions by human activity, far outranking the total from vehicles and aircraft combined. Forests are disappearing so fast in Indonesia that, incredibly, this developing country ranks third in emissions behind industrial giants China and the U.S. Since 1950, estimates Greenpeace, more than 182 million acres (740,000 sq km) of Indonesian forests, the equivalent of more than 95 Ulu Masens, have been destroyed or degraded.

The good news is that protecting forests "is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to take a big bite out of the apple when it comes to emissions," says Greenpeace spokesman Daniel Kessler. Ulu Masen will be one of the first forests to be protected under a pioneering U.N. program called REDD — Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries — that offers a powerful financial incentive to keep forests intact. Here's how it works. Preserve Ulu Masen, and over the next 30 years an estimated 100 million tons of carbon are prevented from entering the earth's atmosphere — the equivalent of 50 million flights from London to Sydney. Those savings can be converted into millions of carbon-offset credits, which are sold to rich countries and companies trying to meet their U.N. emissions-reduction targets. The revenue produced by the sale of credits is then ploughed back into protecting the forest and improving life in communities living along its edge, thereby giving people a reason to leave the trees standing. In other words, forests are better REDD than dead.

With schemes now proliferating across Indonesia and the globe, the U.N. estimates that REDD revenues could pump up to $30 billion a year into the developing world, promising much-needed revenue at a time when rich nations still haggle over how much money to give poorer countries to help them adapt to climate change. REDD will likely be part of any global climate pact negotiated in Copenhagen. "Everyone has got a lot of hope in REDD," says Joe Heffernan, an expert in environmental markets at FFI. "It's a big one."

The Money Tree Ulu Masen received a boost last year when U.S. bank Merrill Lynch pledged to invest $9 million over four years. "That gave the project a lot more certainty," says Dorjee Sun, chairman of Sydney-based firm Carbon Conservation, which is helping Aceh's provincial government devise the scheme. "It showed there was appetite from investment banks to buy these credits." Merrill Lynch calls Ulu Masen "the world's first commercially financed avoided deforestation project." Money has been followed by political muscle: a year later, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, along with the governors of Wisconsin and Illinois, signed a deal committing the state to finding ways to incorporate forest credits within U.S. carbon-trading systems. Ulu Masen is expected to generate $26 million in carbon credits in its first five years.

Humans won't be the only animals to benefit. Clearing land for palm-oil plantations is Indonesia's leading cause of deforestation, says a 2007 U.N. report, with Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua the three worst-affected provinces. Thanks largely to the global appetite for palm oil, which is found in everything from chocolate bars to biofuels, the natural habitat of endangered animals such as the orangutan and Borneo rhino shrinks further each year. REDD could save them, said a recent study of Kalimantan by researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia. They believe that the revenues generated by preserving a forest could not only compete with the profits of cutting it down for palm oil but also fund biodiversity projects to put the brakes on species extinction. REDD could "fundamentally change conservation [in tropical countries] and provide benefits for mammals at a scale we've never seen before," writes its lead author Oscar Venter. If REDD's champions seem almost religious in their support, it is partly because the scheme appears to contain so many holy grails. Done right, its advocates say, REDD will alleviate poverty, preserve rain forests, protect endangered species and do more to avert catastrophic climate change than grounding jets and banning coal. It also offers a rare partnership between two disparate and often conflicting worlds: capitalism and conservation. With REDD, you can save the planet and make money.

Not so, say its equally passionate critics. Conservationists agree that our remaining forests must be saved, and quickly. Where they disagree is how REDD is funded. Many are fundamentally opposed to a carbon-offset system that only safeguards forests by allowing rich nations to pollute. "We need to find ways to stop burning fossil fuels, not create massive new loopholes to allow the pollution to continue," says Jakarta-based Chris Lang, who runs the website REDD-Monitor. "Carbon-trading does not reduce emissions." Lang believes funding REDD schemes through offsets or other market-based mechanisms would be a "disaster." Still, if all goes to plan, Ulu Masen could be the first REDD scheme to sell forest credits.

Into the Wild There are several unique aspects to Aceh that have allowed the scheme's creators to blaze a trail. First, a decades-long separatist insurgency by the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) saved the province from the logging frenzy seen across the rest of Sumatra. "If you went into the forest back then there was a chance you'd get shot," says Matthew Linkie, an FFI technical manager based in the province's capital Banda Aceh.

GAM signed a historic peace deal with the Indonesian government in 2005, in the wake of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed about 160,000 lives in Aceh alone. Today, Aceh's governor is a tsunami survivor and former GAM rebel called Irwandi Yusuf, whose background seems tailor-made for REDD: he was trained as a veterinarian and once worked for FFI. "He's one of the few Indonesian politicians who gets it," says Linkie. "He's thinking way beyond his five-year electoral term." In June 2007 Irwandi banned commercial logging in his province, "an unprecedented environmental act" for Indonesia, says Linkie.

Named after a 7,840-ft.-high (2,390 m) mountain within its borders, Ulu Masen is only slightly smaller than Yellowstone National Park, or about 10 times the size of Singapore. It is patrolled by forest rangers employed by the provincial government and by FFI-funded community rangers, many of them once with GAM. Ulu Masen has helped solve a major challenge for postconflict Aceh: finding jobs for ex-combatants. "In theory," says Linkie, "you've got a pool of well-trained forest experts with jungle skills. They make great rangers."

I joined the rangers near the remote village of Geumpang. It is a six-hour drive from the provincial capital Banda Aceh along a semipaved mountain road winding up through dense forest. In places, a line of vehicles backs up as mechanical diggers clear rockfalls. Troupes of long-tailed macaques tumble down from the trees to beg from passing motorists.

Geumpang sits in a valley of rice fields at the heart of Ulu Masen. It is famous for its fertile soil and the gold sometimes found in its rivers. Raked by clouds, it is also famously wet: some people joke that the name Geumpang is a contraction of gerimis panjang, the Indonesian for "constant drizzle." A no-go area during the conflict — GAM rebels passed through there on their way between Aceh's east and west coasts — it is now a peaceful place. Children walk to school past paddy fields of ripening rice, while glistening water buffalo wallow in pools of mud.

An hour from Geumpang is an FFI camp manned by 10 so-called community rangers, all trained and salaried by FFI, all former poachers, loggers or GAM guerrillas. Keeping them company are five mahouts and their elephants, which are employed for jungle patrols. The camp was set up a year ago. Conditions are basic. The rangers live in tents near a shallow river flowing past overgrown farmland abandoned during the conflict but now slowly being recultivated by returning locals. Insects shriek from the thick jungle beyond. The rangers have discovered that they can get a weak signal — just enough to send text messages to family or friends — if they strap their cell phones to lengths of bamboo driven into the ground at certain points around the camp. So outside every tent there are phones on sticks, like tribal totems.

FFI has already trained 45 community rangers and hopes to have a total of 150 protecting Ulu Masen by the end of next year. They are paid about $160 a month. Over 10 days, the recruits are taught survival skills, navigation, climbing and search and rescue. A graduation ceremony is held in a river at night, lit by flaming torches, where they are dunked beneath the water then hugged by their trainers. "It's like they've been cleansed, absolved of their pasts," says Linkie.

The Human Touch Kamarullah, 43, once carried an ak-47 assault rifle through this forest. Today, he grips four fireworks in one hand and a disposable lighter in the other, to scare off wild elephants. Kamarullah, who goes by a single name, is a lithe, taciturn man who spent eight years fighting for GAM; one of his five daughters was born in hiding in the jungle. How many enemy troops did he kill? "I didn't count," he says, grinning shyly.

A week after the 2005 peace deal was signed, Kamarullah emerged from the jungle to rejoin his family, but struggled to support them until joining the rangers. In GAM, he says, "we had an ideology and a purpose." With the rangers, this expert navigator with an intimate knowledge of the area now feels like he is fighting for his homeland again. "I want to protect the animals," he says. "I'm worried they're dying out. We used to find deer near the village, but now they're gone." Still, the rangers are having an impact. "Before, there were maybe 40 people logging in this area," estimates Kamarullah. "Now there are only 10."

Wild elephants, not loggers, are the rangers' main problem right now. Crops planted by returning farmers are proving irresistible to two local herds. At a farm nearby, elephants have trampled banana and cacao trees, toppled betel-nut palms and left jumbo-size footprints in the fishponds. There, at the forest edge, humans and animals must coexist. Each morning, the calls of gibbons compete with the calls to prayer from nearby village mosques.

Protecting crops from marauding elephants might seem peripheral to the task of preserving Ulu Masen. So might FFI's nursery in Geumpang, where farmers can learn grafting techniques and buy fruit-tree saplings at bargain prices. But both activities are designed to improve the livelihoods of local people, who are key allies in any REDD scheme. "These communities have to benefit," says Linkie. "That's the whole idea. They're getting an incentive not to cut [the forest] down."

Few incentives are more tangible than cash. Conservationists are considering cash payments to farmers in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to stop them destroying the forest for agriculture. But with 120,000 households around Ulu Masen, even a multimillion-dollar sale of carbon credits might amount to only $100 to $200 a year per family, estimates Linkie. The money might be better pooled to build schools, bridges or other projects that would benefit the entire community. However it is distributed, a very clear message must be sent to the local communities, says Linkie: "You're getting this [money] because you're not cutting down the forest."

That message is being heard across this vast archipelago and beyond. Indonesia alone has a dozen or more REDD projects. "It's this new fad — everyone needs to have one," says Linkie. "It's good that governors from other provinces are [saying], 'Must have a REDD project' rather than 'Let's log it all and convert it into oil palm.'" In partnership with the Australian investment bank Macquarie Group, FFI has six other REDD schemes: three in Indonesia and others in Cambodia, Ecuador and Liberia. Last month, governors Irwandi and Schwarzenegger joined 30 other subnational leaders — including a dozen other U.S. governors and the leaders of forest-rich Brazilian states Amazonas and Mato Grosso — at a climate summit in Los Angeles, where they called upon governments to include REDD within the global framework for combating climate change. Sun of Carbon Conservation hopes one day to see "a global infrastructure of forest factories, producing oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide."

But REDD has its risks. The first is so-called leakage: halting deforestation in one area might simply drive loggers into another. "Permanence is a huge problem," says Kessler of Greenpeace, citing another worry. "How do we know these areas are going to stay protected? What happens if a forest burns to the ground?" A third concern is calculating how much carbon is stored in a forest, and what emissions are actually avoided by preserving it. In September a multinational research team led by French landscape ecologist David Gaveau asserted that the Ulu Masen scheme might not significantly reduce deforestation in northern Sumatra because much of the ecosystem is upland, inaccessible and therefore unlikely to be logged anyway.

FFI rebuts this. Ulu Masen borders another protected area called Leuser, also being developed as a REDD scheme, so leakage is not an issue within Aceh province. (The rest of Sumatra is another matter.) As for permanence, FFI has a "reserve pool" of forest to replace any lost to fire or disease, and promises "robust" accounting methods and monitoring by both satellite and field team. It says the calculations in the Gaveau report are incorrect and that Ulu Masen has "substantial lowland forests at risk."

The Politics of Climate Change Greenpeace wants wealthy industrialized nations to pay into a U.N.-run REDD fund that would protect priority areas of deforestation in Indonesia, Congo and the Amazon. A $40 billion – a-year fund "could get us to zero deforestation by 2020 — globally," says Kessler. But will rich nations cough up that much? The U.S., the E.U. and Japan are all "willing to put money on the table" for REDD, he adds. "Just to put it into perspective, $40 billion is about a quarter of what the U.S. gave in bailout funds to one insurance company, AIG. The money is there. It's just a question of political will."

Already that political will seems to be faltering. A legally binding pact will be impossible to achieve at the climate-change summit in Copenhagen, said U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders at the just-concluded APEC meeting in Singapore. Back in the U.S. — cumulatively still the world's biggest polluter — a bill to cut, by 2020, emissions to 20% below 2005 levels faces a bruising and uncertain journey through the Senate. Washington and Copenhagen: whatever happens in the rain forests, it is in these two distinctly non-tropical cities that the fate of our remaining rain forests, and our warming planet, lies. []

Environmental Impact of Mining Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Aceh Forest) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:04:25 PST

Oleh Dewa Gumay

AGENCY of Business miner, government, and economic expert, smart in frame mining investment, such as mineral mining, oil, and gas. Beginning of frame foreign exchange, provide employment, speedy economic growth, until reduce of poor statistic. ‘Framing’ perfect, yet, truly mining industry will be bringing prosperity for people.

There is a joke, which said often by group of pro mining while comment critical attitude from peoples refuse attendance mining industry, its site. More or less, ‘If not agree with mining, back again to Palaeolithic era, and never using equipment from mineral raw’. This joke they are doing as philosophy suicide on disability them to explaining relation with mining and prosperity which truly not positive relation.

Aceh will be immediately enter to phase of mining industry or exploitation industry regime, to replacing hydrocarbon regime at the Aceh Utara was faille to answer mean of prosperity Aceh peoples, eventually result of oil and gas in the Arun field for yearly become APBN supporting (budget of country) in Indonesia at the Orde Baru, Soeharto regime.

Signs will emerge of mining industry regime particularly gold and coal in Aceh was emerge eye of ahead. At the Department of Forestry was queue 10 of Mining Corporate, waiting permit shift of forest function to exploration mining activities. At the Nagan Raya district, PT Surya Kencana was step ahead, exploration of gold and coal. On the same of cases happening at the Aceh Tengah and east cost of Aceh.

Mining industry is not sustainability industry because depend on natural resources or not renewable resources. If there are group pro mining sure that mining industry in Aceh will prosperity bringing, how the environment impact will legacy from mining industry, particularly after operation? Just will more poor of peoples in the mining surrounding.

Environment management in mining operation suppose covering all of phase mining activities that, beginning exploration, production, until mine closure. Learning from case of mine closure doing by PT Barisan Tropical Mining (owned by Laverton Gold Australia) at the Sumatera Selatan Province, PT Indo Moro Kencana (owned by Aurora Gold Australia), PT Newmont Minahasa Raya (owned by Newmont USA), and PT Kelian Equatorial Mining (owned by Rio Tinto England-Australia). Aceh must be learning from cases of mining in the others region in Indonesia.

Phenomenon that happen on mining industry in Indonesia, the mining corporate have impenetrability of law, not obedient of environment order, and free doing pollution not scare getting of punishment. The others behaviour is dismissal waste of mining with way of primitive, dismissal direction of tailing waste to river, lake, and sea.

Legacy of Mining Industry

Mining industry on mine closure phase will leave many legacy have dangerous potency in long-term, such as, pit, sour water mines (acid mine drainage), and tailing.

PIT, Mostly mineral mining in Indonesia conducted with open mining. While is finished operating, corporate will leaving giant pit at the mining area. That pits potentially evoking of environmental impact in long-term, particularly related with water quality and quantity.

Mines water pit contain several heavy metal can seep to ground water system and contaminate ground water surrounding. Dangerous potency from seep to in ground water oftentimes not monitor because it’s frail monitoring system mining corporate that. At the Bangka and Belitung island many to see pits of ex mines tin which contain sour water mines and very dangerous.

SOUR WATERS MINES, sour water mines contain heavy metals have potentially evoking of environmental impact. While of sour water mines formed, very difficult to stopping because natural character from rock reaction, as example, timbale mining on Roman Empire still being produced sour water mines after 2000 years.

Sour water mines new formed of yearly, so if corporate mining do not long-term monitoring, the waste rocks will evoke sour water mines. Sour water mines have potentially surfaced and ground water contaminate. Once contaminate of water very difficult to handle action.

TAILING, tailing resulted of mining operation in mostly amount, 97 percent of ore processing by factory will be tailing. Tailing have heavy metals contain in worried compositions, as copper, timbale or black tin, mercury, zinc, and arsenic. When into human-life being, the heavy metals that will accumulate in body and dangerous effect for health.

It is bad lucky, there is no order in Indonesia that is mandatory to mining corporate to conducted mines closure process truly and responsibility. Mining agreement between government of Indonesia and corporate only mandatory to mining corporate reclamation conduct, in corporate thinking define that agreement is only tree planting.

Government of Aceh having Lesson learn from cases and mining figures at the others site in handle expand mining regime was came to Aceh. Mining investment must not looked from economics perspective with ignore environmental problem in long-term. Lesson learn from many cases mining at the poor site, prosperity to people just illusion, added a legacy in long-term, named Environmental Pollution. []

Can REDD Keep Indonesia’s Forests Green?

noreply@blogger.com (Aceh Forest) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:58:25 PST

It’s the hottest acronym going in the world of climate change. The UN-backed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is being touted as both the saviour of rain forests and a new natural resource commodity that will bring untold riches to the developing world.

The concept, also known as REDD, is both simple and ingenious: Countries can sell credits on the amount of carbon their forests and rain forests soak up to industrialized nations that need to reduce emissions, thereby protecting their environment, stopping global warming and ensuring a sustainable future income without having to chop down the trees.

The reality is more complicated. The proposed UN carbon trading scheme remains just that, a proposal. It’s also very complex, would be open to abuse and corruption and can leave local forest-based communities with nothing.

“If I can save forests and get paid for it, that’s much better than not saving forests,” said Timothy H Brown, senior natural resources management specialist at the World Bank in Jakarta. “If you want to save the forests, make some money out of it. Don’t just encourage somebody to love biodiversity. That doesn’t pay the bills.”

Indeed, a key facet of the REDD scheme is to provide a new and lasting source of revenue for developing nations, in particular regional administrations and local populations. Any new international protocol on climate change, whether it’s reached in Copenhagen this month, or sometime in 2010, is likely also to produce a comprehensive agreement on REDD — in effect, making carbon a commodity on a par with oil, natural gas or coal.

The rain forests of Indonesia, which has several pilot REDD projects currently under way, and those in Brazil, are being touted as the future of carbon trading. But that’s not necessarily a good thing, according to experts and environmental activists.

“Indonesia hasn’t shown the ability to prevent deforestation,” Brown said, adding that 1.1 million hectares of Indonesian forests vanish each year.

A Human Rights Watch report released on Tuesday said Indonesia lost up to $2 billion annually between 2003 and 2006 due to illegal logging, unpaid taxes and royalties from forestry and hidden subsidies for timber companies. That figure did not include the billions likely lost each year from unreported timber smuggled abroad.

The report questioned Indonesia’s ability to set up what might be the world’s largest carbon trading market to protect forests, given huge corruption in the industry. “In the absence of safeguards, the carbon finance market will simply inject more money into an already corrupt system, short-cutting needed reforms and exacerbating the situation,” the report said.

Among the biggest fears is manipulation by foreign carbon brokers who wave cash in the faces of provincial and district government leaders. Called “carbon cowboys,” they can sign deals that give Indonesian districts only a fraction of what they should be getting.

Fitrian Ardiansyah, program director for climate and energy at World Wildlife Fund Indonesia, said carbon brokers have already signed deals or made approaches in East Kalimantan, Papua and Aceh.

“They say, ‘Sign this. For 100,000 hectares for REDD, you will get $2 per hectare,’ ” Fitrian said. “But you’re not supposed to count the hectares, you count the carbon.”

That’s where it gets tricky. The mathematical and scientific calculations to determine how much carbon a given area of forest absorbs are extremely complex, likely far beyond the educational level of a local district chief, experts say. And although they can receive as much as $2,500 per hectare of protected forest, local communities must first invest millions of dollars or more up front to establish an internationally verifiable way to show that their preserved forests aren’t still being chopped down or otherwise misused.

“To have an international commodity, you have to have this scientific basis and certification process, because you’re selling something that doesn’t exist,” Brown said.

Another major issue, especially for Indonesia, is who owns the forests in which carbon is stored, and thus has the right to sell the credits. Local communities from Sumatra to Papua are ingrained with the belief that the forest belongs to them, while local, provincial and even the national government have the legal right to lease the land to companies.

“There’s no recognition of indigenous people’s rights,” said M Teguh Surya, head of advocacy at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).

Walhi, which is arguably the country’s leading environmental group, has lobbied against REDD, saying the current scheme needs to be amended to require prior consent from indigenous populations before any deals are struck. The group is also calling for a ban on market-based trading of carbon credits — meaning no public selling on stock exchanges — and an international agreement on reducing developed nations’ demand for raw materials such as timber.

“REDD is CO2 colonialism,” Surya said. “We still need a long debate before we decide anything.”

The Ministry of Forestry has a lot to answer for in its woeful management of the nation’s forests over the decades. But it has received kudos for its ongoing preparation for REDD, which wouldn’t go into effect until 2013 at the earliest.

The ministry has, among other things, developed a national carbon accounting system, a strategic development plan, a monitoring plan and a forest resource inventory system. The oversight must be in place, experts say, to prevent Indonesia’s carbon from going the way of its depleted forests.

“It’s a difficult, arcane subject matter. The science, the policy, the economics of it. It’s a daunting task,” said Todd Lemons, from Infinite Earth, a Hong Kong-based company going through a government certification process to sell REDD options on an orangutan sanctuary in Central Kalimantan.

Nur Masripatin, head of social, economic and forestry policy at the Forestry Ministry, said the government was also preparing programs aimed at “improving the management of national forests, and not encouraging the conversion of forest land to palm oil.”

Commodity prices, specifically those of palm oil, could be the spanner in the works for REDD. Given that carbon credits will eventually be traded publicly on international markets, the scheme is at the mercy of crude palm oil prices.

If the price of palm oil goes higher than the price of carbon credits, all bets could be off and the REDD scheme could be quickly consigned to the dust bin of history — along with the forests it is meant to protect. []

Sources: thejakartaglobe

Payment of Environmental Services in Aceh

noreply@blogger.com (Aceh Forest) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:57:54 PST

By Dewa Gumay

PROGRESS of environmental issues on this decade, happening progress very fast, beginning from environmental degradation, conservation, and the new issue is scheme of Payment of Environmental Services (PES).

Actually, basis for PES theory was arise fifty years a go from a Britain economist at the Chicago University, Ronald Harry Coase in its article The Problem of Social Cost on 1960. On its article, Coase accept Economic Nobel on 1991. According to Coase, “in as much as environment loss gets monetary character therefore attained optimal solution will same, despite on whom property rights is given”.

Progress of PES issues has result many discussion and analysis of many parties, in progress than arising variously perspective, on the end will be emerging deviation and shifting tend from actually PES output. Question more importantly is what is PES, why, how, and when PES could be implementation, this article little explaining key question that.

According Sven Wunder, researcher from CIFOR, PES is payoff scheme to service provider to increasing quality and quantity environmental services, not payment to ecosystem it self. Formally, Wunder define PES tight, which is transaction that done just voluntary, cause payment, or not environmental services that constant is adrift. Ideally, payment is user environmental services and payoff is provider environmental services.

On watersheds management congress year 2003, for third country at the America Latin region, PES defines compensation mechanism where’s provider environmental services paid by user environmental services. While for water services and river basin protected, PES define as implementation market mechanism, given compensation to community as land owners on the river upstream that they are do conservation area and not change land function which is effect to provider and water quality on the river downstream.

Why using PES scheme? Goal of PES is a pushing utilize of natural resources more efficient and responsible. If, there is no directly intervention from public, threat to environmental damage will more increase, availability of environmental services wills be scarce, and arise variously environment problems, such as flooding, drying, landslide, global warming, and climate change. Community pushed to accept responsibility ecosystem management and remove incentive in the using natural resources.

Cheap over price pushing peoples to consumption to much from ideally, so arise inefficiency and environmental damage. PES expected has correction deviation of price environmental services too low, namely zero while there is no payment of environmental services.

Actually, there are several corrections about place PES water perspective into market mechanism. Cause, in Indonesia context, rights for water is constitutional rights every citizenship or public goods. If we references of water management model like government through PDAM (local corporate in Indonesia), PDAM is stage of PES define. While PDAM self not given payment to water provider or community on the upstream river. Eventually, the economics analysis, PDAM have taken commercial benefit from water providing on the upstream river.

Doribel Herrador and Leopoldo Dimas, agronomist and environmental economist researcher from El Salvador countries, differentiate between PES and incentive, according to him, incentive is short term, while PES is permanent and long term up to environmental services that constant adrift.

Implementation of PES

How to implementation PES is a difficult process, one of the group have perspective that PES must performed with voluntary scheme. Its mean, the transaction between provider and user services must be done independently and no intimidation from other parties, or allegorized transaction goods and services in the market.

In several case studies, river basin one of the models to implementation PES, river basin upstream is providing environmental services, and river basin downstream is using environmental services. In river upstream context, scheme of payment of environmental services can be paid if there seriously effort and continue from community peoples in the protected area and quality environmental services, in this case is water. Water providing and quality depends on quality of forest cover and exploitation model at the river.

Meanwhile in river downstream context, water user is benefit receiver or party must be pay, what is the direct use, such as PDAM or industries and hotels that have water processing, or to non-direct benefit receiver, as household.

Therefore needed an aware and highly sense from benefit receiver of environmental services, so they feel readily pay to provider services. On the next step, if benefit receiver readily to pay, will arise new problem, who payment that given? If payment that are not right people or not fair, of course needed true parameters.

Scheme of PES in Aceh

What is scheme most right to implementation in Aceh? If use PES theory voluntary scheme very difficult to implementation, increasing awareness user environmental services or buyers very difficult to hoped, even to avoiding because using of environmental services is a something are adrift perpetually, and used any time. That thing can be understood, because lifespan standard in Aceh most of low, although PES voluntary could be implemented to group or core business.

Therefore, government intervention needed very absolute, obviously many corrections might be government to do, in this case transparency and management partisan on fairness and took basis for people’s constitution on environmental services as public goods.

Many approaches and scheme to do in PES management, market approaches might be second optional, with judgment that very difficult and height cost to create a environmental services market.

Conclusion of PES scheme is pushing people’s affluent which contribution in the protecting natural resources, with notes that river downstream or benefit receiver or payment parties, its logic mostly riches than river upstream or provider services or parties which payment given. If not, there is no PES scheme. []