Jakarta Globe 7 Jul 10;
Indonesia is expected to implement a five-year moratorium on issuing permits for new logging concessions in peat forests, in effect overlapping with an existing policy, a draft of a presidential decree indicated on Tuesday.
The decree on “Moratorium Policy to Open Peatlands for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation” is part of the government’s ambitious bid to cut carbon emissions by 26 percent over the next five years, mostly from the forestry sector.
It mirrors a two-year moratorium on such permits that the government announced in June as part of an agreement with Norway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
However, environmentalists say the move will not achieve much unless the government’s forestry management policies are overhauled.
“It doesn’t make a difference if the moratorium is for two years or five,” Greenpeace Indonesia lead forest campaigner Bustar Maitar said on Tuesday.
“If the government still can’t make its forestry policy clear, then there’s no use talking about a moratorium.”
Any effective policy would include a review of existing concessions, and not just a blanket ban on new ones, Bustar said.
“These existing permits need to be addressed in the presidential decree so that the government can really fix the forestry management and recalculate the potential of our forests,” he said, adding the decree would also need to be synchronized with spatial planning blueprints.
Greenomics Indonesia executive director Elfian Effendi criticized the draft decree for not addressing the critical role of local administrations.
“It doesn’t take into consideration regional autonomy or decentralization, which is important because local administrations are major stakeholders in the forestry sector,” he said.
The draft decree is based on the forestry, spatial planning and environmental protection and management laws, as well as a government zoning regulation.
Meanwhile, a senior government official, who asked not to be named, said the presidential decree was not drafted solely in response to the bilateral agreement with Norway, but said that agreement had acted as a catalyst for the decree.
“I don’t know whether the final version of the decree will stipulate two years or five for the moratorium, but there were discussions early on to go with five years because some people considered two years to be too short,” the official said.
Emil Salim, a member of the presidential advisory board who helped coordinate the drafting of the decree, said he was not aware of any development mentioning any time limit for the moratorium on new logging permits.
“I wasn’t involved in the discussion about whether the moratorium should be for two or five years,” he said.
“ The final authority to determine the length of time rests with the forestry minister.”
Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan was unavailable for comment .
