Scheme to protect 1.8m acres of rainforest in Aceh

Charles Clover, The Telegraph 5 Mar 08;

A world-first rainforest conservation project which will lock up 100 million tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of 50 million flights from London to Sydney, has been agreed in Indonesia.

The scheme will protect 1.8 million acres of rainforest in northern Sumatra, including endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran elephant and the northernmost population of orang utans.

The project is designed to deliver millions of carbon credits for future sale under the treaty that will eventually emerge from the world climate talks in Bali last December.

The project's activities are expected to reduce the deforestation of Aceh province's endangered Ulu Masen forest by 85 per cent, thereby bringing about a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

The 3.3 million credits to be generated annually by the project, which is supported by the charity Fauna and Flora International, the Australian company Carbon Conservation and the governor of Aceh, are intended to help finance the conservation of the forest's wildlife and bring employment to some of Indonesia's poorest rural communities.

It is expected that the project will generate $18.5 million a year.

The project is partly the brainchild of the province's governor, Irwandi Yusuf, who was on the side of Aceh's separatists at the time of the 2004 tsunami and broke out of jail as the tsunami hit.

He has since banned deforestation in the province, a radical step in Sumatra where illegal logging, with the connivance of the police and military, has been endemic.

The project is the first REDD project (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) to be approved by the organisation responsible for overseeing the certification of such carbon projects, the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance.

Mark Rose, chief executive officer of FFI, said: "We are very pleased our team in Aceh has received such a strong independent endorsement for their conservation field programme.

"The team works in difficult conditions, responding to many humanitarian and ecological challenges, post tsunami."

He said the breakthrough came when a $20 million multi-donor trust fund was set up for the preservation of the forest, which meant the provincial authorities recognised the importance of the forest to the local community, not least because it provided water for the 5 million inhabitants of Banda Aceh, Sumatra's most northern city.

The first carbon credits are expected to be sold in 2009. Before then FFI says that illegal logging still threatens the near-pristine ecosystem and its Sumatran tigers of which there are just 300-400 left in the wild.