Carbon-trading plan may curb rampant logging, but doubts linger
Straits Times 7 Dec 07;
KUALA CENAKU (RIAU) - HERE on the island of Sumatra, about 1,930km from the global climate talks under way in Bali, are some of the world's fastest-disappearing forests.
From here, to anybody looking out over a vast wasteland of charred stumps and dried-out peat, the fight to save Indonesia's forests can seem nearly impossible.
'What can we possibly do to stop this? I feel lost, I feel abandoned,' said Mr Pak Helman, 28, a villager here in Riau province.
In recent years, dozens of pulp and paper companies have descended on Riau, which is roughly the size of Switzerland, snatching up generous government concessions to log and establish palm oil plantations. And villagers are in a state of panic.
Responding to global demand for palm oil, which is used in cooking and cosmetics and, lately, in an increasingly popular biodiesel, companies have been claiming any land they can.
Fortunately, from Mr Helman's point of view, the issue of Riau's disappearing forests has become a global one. He is now a volunteer for Greenpeace, which has established a camp in his village to monitor what it calls an impending Indonesian 'carbon bomb'.
Deforestation now accounts for 20 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to scientists. And Indonesia releases more carbon through deforestation than any other country in the world.
According to the World Bank, it is the third-leading source of carbon emissions caused by human activity, behind the United States and China.
Within Indonesia, it is in Riau that the situation is most critical. But it is also in Riau that a new global strategy for conserving forests in developing countries might begin. A small area of Riau's remaining forest will become a test case if an international carbon-trading plan called REDD is adopted.
REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, is to be one of the central topics of discussion at the United Nations Climate Change Conference now under way in Bali.
Essentially, it would involve wealthy countries' paying developing countries for every hectare of forest they do not cut down.
At a meeting of 40 environment ministers near Jakarta in October, Indonesia won support for the carbon-trading plan from other tropical countries like Congo and Brazil.
But there are plenty of sceptics, who doubt it will be possible to measure just how much carbon is being conserved - and question whether the plan, once in place, can be safeguarded against illegal logging and corruption.
Monitoring the activities of pulp and paper companies in this extremely remote area would be a major undertaking. Companies are cultivating land legally sold to them by the Indonesian government, but maps of their projects obtained by Greenpeace indicate that many of them have also moved into protected areas.
Illegal logging is commonplace in Indonesia, with the government admitting it cannot be everywhere.
Most worrying to critics is the country's endemic corruption.
At the Bali conference, the Woods Hole Research Centre, an environmental group based in the US, has presented research showing that new satellite technology can make it more feasible to track illegal logging.
Such developments are good news to Mr Helman who, using his wooden boat, has been ferrying foreign environmentalists and journalists in and out of the forest in recent weeks.
'I am so thankful for the recent attention,' he said. 'At times it seems too late. But I see some hope now.'
NEW YORK TIMES
