Greenpeace sets up camp in Sumatra forest to prevent climate destruction

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 27 Oct 09;

Greenpeace has set up a "climate defender camp" in Indonesian rainforest to protect forest from deforestation to help deal with the climate change.

The camp, placed in Kampar Peninsula in Sumatra, was aimed to bring urgent attention to the role that deforestation plays in driving dangerous climate change, a critical issue to be addressed at the UN Copenhagen Climate Summit in December.

“We are taking up position at the front line of forest and climate destruction to tell world leaders that to avert climate chaos they must tackle deforestation here and now,” Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace South East Asia forest campaigner said in his statement.

He said that would remain there for several weeks.

He said that much of forest that once surrounded the Peninsula has been destroyed to make way for plantations, largely for products like paper and palm oil, which are transported worldwide and used to make chocolate, toothpaste and so-called ‘climate-friendly’ biofuels.

Greenpeace is also calling on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to give the climate some breathing space by instigating moratorium on any further destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests or carbon rich peat soils they grow on.

Greenpeace asks EU to help Indonesia protect forests
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 28 Oct 09;

From its “climate defender camp” in Riau, Greenpeace Indonesia has called on world leaders to help Indonesia protect its forest and to cut emissions in its fight against climate change.

The Greenpeace activists placed two large banners with portraits of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy in a peatland area in Riau ahead of the European Union leaders’ summit scheduled for Thursday in Brussels.

“The EU has accumulated a historical carbon debt by fuelling deforestation and forest degradation abroad. It is now the responsibility of European leaders to commit to substantial public funding to stop the last remaining tropical forests from going up in smoke,” Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace South East Asia forest campaigner, said in a statement.

Indonesia hosts the world’s third largest forested area with about 120 million hectares of rainforest. But the country also has the highest deforestation rate in the world with about 1.08 million hectares lost to widespread illegal logging, forest fires and farmland conversion.

Indonesia has promised to cut its emissions from the forestry sector by 26 percent by 2020.

“President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s words [on emissions reduction target of 26 percent] are a sign of hope for the millions of people who are already suffering the impacts of climate change,” Shailendra Yashwant, campaign director for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said.

“He needs financial assistance from developed countries to turn his commitments into action. The EU leaders must show leadership as he has and put their money where their mouth is.”