Indonesia To End Freeze On Peatlands For Plantations

PlanetArk 17 Feb 09;

JAKARTA - Indonesia will open up peatland forests for plantation crops such as palm oil after freezing new permits for more than a year, an agriculture ministry official said on Monday, in a move that has alarmed green groups.

Achmad Mangga Barani, director general for plantations at the ministry, said that the government was lifting the moratorium brought in December, 2007, after a study in order to boost the welfare of local people.

"In principle, we will allow the use of peatlands for plantations under a stricter criteria and a very limited scale," he said.

Green groups had urged the government to maintain a freeze of oil palm plantations in peatlands to combat climate change.

Indonesia's remaining peatland forests are one of the world's largest stores of carbon, holding around 37.8 billion tonnes, according to Greenpeace.

A report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain's Department for International Development says up to 84 percent of Indonesia's carbon emissions come from deforestation, forest fires and peatland degradation.

Barani said the government had discussed the new decree with environmental groups.

"We think it is a crazy proposal," Martin Baker, communications manager at Greenpeace International in Asia, said.

Bustar Maitar, forest campaigner for Greenpeace, said the decree appeared to be setting stricter criteria after the study, but he said the results had not been shared with the group.

"We understand that there was a study and the government promised to discuss with us the result of the study but we have never seen the result," said Maitar.

Barani said details of the new ministerial decree were due to be released on Tuesday.

Indonesia, the world's biggest producer of crude palm oil, expects palm oil output to rise about 5 percent to 19.7 million tonnes this year, against 18.7 million tonnes in 2008.

(Reporting by Aloysius Bhui; Editing by Ed Davies)

Govt to allow peatland plantations
Adianto P. Simamora Jakarta Post 13 Feb 09;

The Agriculture Ministry will issue a decree to allow businesses to dig up the country’s millions of hectares of peatland for oil palm plantations.

Gatot Irianto, the ministry’s head of research and development, said his office was currently drafting a ministerial decree that would explain in detail the mechanism to turn the peatland areas into oil palm plantations, a move that many say will further damage the country’s environment.

“We still need land for oil palm plantations. We must be honest: the sector has been the main driver for the people’s economy,” he said Thursday on the sidelines of a discussion about adaptation in agriculture, organized by the National Commission on Climate Change.

The draft decree is expected to go into force this year.

“We’ve discussed the draft with stakeholders, including hard-line activists, to convince them that converting peatland is safe,” he said.

“We promise to promote eco-friendly management to ward off complaints from overseas buyers and international communities.”

Indonesia is currently the world’s largest crude palm oil (CPO) producer, and is expected to produce about 19.5 million tons this year.

Overseas buyers, however, have complained about Indonesia’s CPO products, saying they are produced at the expense of the environment.

Activists point to the massive expansions of plantations, including in peatlands, for the deaths of large numbers of orangutans in Kalimantan and Sumatra and for releasing huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Indonesia has about 20 million hectares of dense, black tropical peat swamps — formed when vegetation rots — that are natural carbon storage sinks.

A hectare of peatland can store between 3,400 and 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), but emits a much larger amount when burned.

Asked about the contribution to global warming, Gatot said trees planted in peatlands would absorb greenhouse gas emissions.

“The peatland will produce emissions only in the opening of the land, but this will be reabsorbed after new trees are planted,” he said.

However, a World Bank report from 2007 showed Indonesia was the world’s third biggest carbon emitter after the US and China, thanks mainly to the burning of peatlands.

A Wetlands International report from 2006 said Indonesia’s peatlands emitted around 2 billion
tons of CO2 a year, far higher than the country’s emissions from energy, agriculture and waste,
which together amount to only 451 million tons.

The country would have ranked 20th in the global carbon emitter list if emissions from peatlands were not counted.

The ministerial decree is being drafted at a time when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is still preparing a decree on peatland management in an effort to help combat global warming.

The draft of the presidential decree, drawn up in 2007, calls for tightened supervision on the use of peatlands across the country.

Activists denounce plan to allow palm oil firms in peatlands
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 16 Feb 09;

Environmental activists have mounted a challenge against the government’s plan to allow palm oil companies to set up plantations in the country’s remaining peatlands.

Greenpeace Southeast Asia says the plan runs counter to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s promise to halve emissions from the forestry sector by 2009. The President made the pledge during the climate change conference in Bali in 2007 and at the G7 summit in Hokkaido, Japan, last year.

“Opening up peatlands would cause huge carbon emissions into the atmosphere that can’t be compensated for, including by oil palm trees,” Greenpeace forest campaigner Yuyun Indradi told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

He called on Yudhoyono to take action to halt the conversion of peatlands, or risk the failure of efforts to tackle climate change.

“The government needs to protect the remaining peatlands and forests if we are to slow down climate change and protect the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities and biodiversity,” he said.

The government has promised to cut emissions, including from the forestry sector, by 50 percent in 2009, 75 percent in 2012, and 95 percent in 2025.

The National Action Plan on mitigation and adaptation on climate change revealed the country’s agriculture sector contributed up to 96.42 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2005.

The Agriculture Ministry said it would issue a decree this year allowing businesses to open up peatlands for oil palm plantations, as part of efforts to boost the country’s crude palm oil (CPO) production.

Ecosys, a European-based institute dealing with energy, carbon and biofuel issues, estimates that peatlands planted with oil palms would emit about 0.46 kilograms of CO2 per megajoule (MJ).

Indonesia has about 20 million hectares of dense, black tropical peat swamps that are natural carbon storage sinks.

Fitrian Ardiansyah, head of WWF Indonesia’s climate change and energy program, said the government should prioritize exploiting millions of hectares of idle land if it wanted to expand the CPO business.

“We currently have more than 7 million hectares of idle land. Why does the government not utilize this before opening up forests or peatlands?” he said.

Demand for CPO has risen globally, spurred on by the development of the biofuel industry.
However, scientists warn the use of crop-based biofuels could speed up rather than slow down global warming, by fueling the destruction of rainforests.

Once heralded as the answer to oil, biofuels have become increasingly controversial because of their impact on food prices and the amount of energy it takes to produce them.

They may also be responsible for pumping far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they could possibly save as a replacement for fossil fuels, according to a study released Saturday.

“If we run our cars on biofuels produced in the tropics, chances will be good that we are effectively burning rainforests in our gas tanks,” Holly Gibbs, of Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, was quoted as saying by AFP.

Gibbs studied satellite photos of the tropics from 1980 to 2000, and found that half of new farmland came from intact rainforests, with another 30 percent from disturbed forests.

“When trees are cut down to make room for new farmland, they are usually burned, sending their stored carbon into the atmosphere as CO2,” Gibbs said.

For high-yield crops like sugarcane, it would take 40 to 120 years to pay back this carbon debt.

For lower yield crops like corn or soybeans, it would take 300 to 1,500 years, she told reporters at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“Biofuels have caused alarm because of how quickly production has been growing: global ethanol production increased by four times and biodiesel by 10 times between 2000 and 2007,” she said.

“Moreover, agricultural subsidies in Indonesia and in the United States are providing added incentives to increase production of these crops.”

Gibbs estimated that anywhere from a third to two-thirds of recent deforestation could be as a result of the increased demand for biofuels, but added an increased demand for food and feed also played a major role.

Much of the expansion of cropland in response to growing demand and rising prices is occurring in the tropics, where there is an abundance of arable land and an ideal growing climate for biofuel crops like sugarcane, soybeans and oil palms.