Oil palm plantation not in forest sector: Indonesian Government

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 23 Feb 10;

Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said he had no plan to draft a decree aimed at including oil palm plantations in the forestry sector.

“I don’t know about it. There won’t be any forest conversion into oil palm plantations,” he said Monday on the side of a hearing with the House of Representatives’ Commission IV on forestry and agriculture.

Zulkifli said the expansion of oil palm plantations would only be allowed on idle lands.

“If you ask me about forest conversion into oil palm estates, it is not now. We are still focusing to [examine land] on reaching self-sufficiency on sugar cane,” he said.

A source at the ministry said the draft of the decree on the palm oil issue had been finished and was likely to be discussed this month before being approved by the minister.

The ministry’s head of research and development Tachrir Fathoni had said the draft would include oil palm plantations into forest, which had been applied by a number of countries including Malaysia.

He dismissed fears that the draft would lead to forest conversions.

Malaysia, the second largest producers of palm oil after Indonesia, uses the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) standard to identify the forest — which is land with tree crown cover of more than 10 percent and an area of more than 0.5 hectares with trees reaching a minimum height of five meters.

The 1999 law on forest defines the forests as an integrated ecosystem in the form of land comprising biological resources, dominated by trees in natural forms and the surrounding environment, and which cannot be separated from each other.

Executive director of Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi) Berry Furgon warned that the government should follow the definition of forest as stated in the law.

“The draft shows the government has no will to protect the forest. They must amend the 1999 law on forestry if the government wants to apply standards from the FAO.”

He said the draft would only legalize deforestation in the country.

Indonesia has 137 million hectares of forest but the deforestation rate has reached over one million hectares per year due to illegal logging and forest conversion including for oil palm plantations.

The Agriculture Ministry said last week it planned to use 1.8 million hectares of land designated as industrial forests (HTI) for oil palm plantations.

Agriculture Minister Suswono said that of 9.7 million hectares of land available for oil palm plantations, 7.9 million hectares was already developed, leaving the 1.8 million hectares designated as HTI.

Executive director of the Greenomics Indonesia, Elfian Effendi said Indonesia has no reason to be proud as the world’s largest producer of palm oil since hundreds of oil palm plantations operating in forest zones were illegal.