Biodiversity protected areas in Indonesia ineffective in preventing deforestation

A press release from National University of Singapore: Establishing protected areas in forests is one way to keep deforestation at bay and safeguard biodiversity. However, a study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has revealed that such a measure is ineffective in the case of biodiversity-focused protected areas in Indonesia.

The research, led by Assistant Professor Roman Carrasco of the Department of Biological Sciences at the NUS Faculty of Science and Assistant Professor Alex Cook of NUS’ Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, found that the monitoring and prevention of road constructi
on within protected areas and stepping up control measures in illegal logging hotspots would be more effective for conservation than reliance on protected areas alone.

...Global rates of tropical deforestation have increased over the last two decades, particularly in Southeast Asia, which lost approximately 32 million hectares of forests between 1990 and 2010. During this period, Indonesia accounted for approximately 61 per cent of forest loss in Southeast Asia.

“Extensive deforestation in Indonesia is a cause for global concern as it contributes substantially to land-based global carbon emissions and potentially high rates of biodiversity loss,” explained Asst Prof Carrasco.

...The research, conducted by Mr Cyrille Brun, a Masters student at the NUS Faculty of Science under the supervision of Asst Prof Carrasco and Asst Prof Cook, looked at the five main islands of Indonesia, namely Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua. By using remote sensing maps of land use change from 2000 to 2010 to construct spatial Bayesian models, they analysed deforestation patterns in Indonesia as well as the effectiveness of protected areas. The team used the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classification of protected areas in order to evaluate the influence of potential factors on deforestation and project future deforestation.

The models showed that deforestation between 2010 and 2020 is likely to occur in close proximity to the areas that have been deforested before 2010, identifying the south and west part of Kalimantan, the north-west Sumatra and West Papua as areas that will be subject to the greatest rates of deforestation...

A logging road in East Kalimantan, shot by Aidenvironment, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

In Jakarta, that sinking feeling is all too real

Bill Tarrant at the Thomson Reuters Foundation via Reuters: …"Jakarta is a bowl, and the bowl is sinking," said Fook Chuan Eng, senior water and sanitation specialist with the World Bank, who oversees a $189 million flood mitigation project for the city.

The channels of the Ciliwung and other rivers are sinking. The entire sprawl of Jakarta's north coast - fishing ports, boatyards, markets, warehouses, fish farms, crowded slums and exclusive gated communities - it's all sinking. Even the 40-year-old seawall that is supposed to keep the Java Sea from inundating the Indonesian capital is sinking.

…Flooding from overflowing rivers and canals in the area is at least an annual event that forces Rahmawati and the rest of the kampong to evacuate to public buildings nearby. High-water marks from the last big flood, in 2013, are still visible on the walls of the kampong.

Jakarta is sinking because of a phenomenon called subsidence. This happens when extraction of groundwater causes layers of rock and sediment to slowly pancake on top of each other.

The problem is particularly acute in Jakarta because most of its millions of residents suck water through wells that tap shallow underground aquifers. Wells also provide about a third of the needs of business and industry, according to city data….

Jakarta's skyline, shot by Vian kadal, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

17 dead, nearly 100 missing in Indonesian landslide

Terra Daily: Torrential downpours triggered a landslide on Indonesia's main island of Java, killing at least 17 people and leaving nearly 100 others missing, with persistent rain hampering rescue efforts, officials said Saturday.

Hundreds of rescuers were digging with shovels through mud and rubble after the landslide buried scores of houses in Jemblung village in central Java late Friday, the national disaster agency said. The landslide swept down a hillside in the village, sparing only two houses, an AFP correspondent said.

"The rescue team have found 17 bodies," the national disaster agency's spokesman, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, told AFP, adding that 11 others were badly injured and rescuers were searching for 91 people still missing. The disaster agency said that 200 rescuers and 500 volunteers had joined the search for the missing....

Locator map of Java by Jeanot, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Indonesia faces challenging problems to quell ongoing forest fires

Terra Daily via Xinhua: Indonesia is facing challenging problems in dealing with the annual forest fire issue as it is related to perilous attitude of people living around the forest and plantations.

A senior official said 99 percent of fires in the forest were incited by intentional torching, conducted both in rain and dry seasons.

"During February to July, the hotspots were even higher than in the previous years. It means that the torching was also conducted in rainy season," Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesperson of National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said in his office here on Wednesday, explaining the ongoing forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan provinces whose haze has disrupted activities in several cities, spreading to neighboring countries of Singapore and Malaysia.

Sutopo added that while the nation's largest forest fire in 1997 was ultimately contributed by the El Nino natural phenomenon, "now 99 percent of forest fires were caused by intentional torching, (which)makes the fire razes on and hard to be controlled. This nightmare may continue until peak of dry season estimated in October."…
\
Citing satellite monitor data, Sutopo added that the hotspots in Sumatra and Kalimantan has been sprawling high, as in Sept. 13 they were detected at 351 locations, but two days later the hotspots in two islands have expanded high to 1,644 locations….

NASA image of 2009 fires in Borneo

Indonesia’s presidential hopefuls face up to deforestation

Sandra Siagian in IPS: As the world’s third-largest democracy heads to the polls next week to elect a new president, environmental activists remain sceptical of the candidates’ commitment to tackle climate change.

Over four televised debates, Indonesia’s presidential contenders – Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, Jakarta’s current governor, and Prabowo Subianto, a former general – have so far discussed their plans to shape the economy, boost international affairs, manage human capital and ensure clean governance. The environment is one of the last topics to be addressed in the final debate this Saturday ahead of the crucial Jul. 9 presidential election.

“I think because they [the candidates] don’t see Indonesia as a developed country, reducing emissions [is] not a priority for them,” explained Yuyun Indradi, a forest campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia-Indonesia, adding that a strong statement addressing environmental issues from either candidate could possibly convince swing voters.

...But Farhan Helmy, manager of the Indonesia Climate Change Center (ICCC), does not see the issues as mutually exclusive. In an interview with IPS, he asserted that a green economy should be a platform for any party wishing to promote quality economic growth.

“So of course I would like to see the candidates make their environment policies the bigger picture,” he said. “My hope is that whoever leads the country will understand that we are not alone in terms of global efforts and we cannot work alone.”

...So far, the country’s track record is poor. According to a study published this past Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, Indonesia has outstripped Brazil to become the country with the world’s highest rate of deforestation, even though its rainforests amount to only a quarter of Brazil’s Amazon....

Deforested and degraded land in Kalimantan, Indonesia, shot by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Wikimedia Commons via Fickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Indonesia's 'haze' pollution defenses not enough, says green group

Michael Taylor and Kanupriya Kapoor in Reuters: Indonesia's promises to tackle the upcoming annual "haze" season with a $30 million fund and limited military equipment have been called into question by experts anticipating worse pollution levels than last year due to the El Nino weather pattern.

Indonesia has failed in previous attempts to stop the regional haze, with last year giving the worst pollution readings since 1997. Outgoing Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was forced in mid-2013 to apologize to neighbors Singapore and Malaysia, which were blanketed in thick smog caused by forest fires in Indonesia.

With expectations high that the El Nino dry weather pattern will hit around the middle of the year, the haze could be worse than in 2013, conservation experts told Reuters. "We are talking hundreds of thousands of hectares that will probably burn and I doubt (the government) will be able to cover this much of an area," said David Gaveau, a scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research, a conservation organization based in Indonesia.

"We're expecting El Nino and if it comes, we're going to see much more fires than last year." The heavy smoke from slash-and-burn clearances often comes from the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, where large forest concessions are used by pulp and paper and palm oil companies, some of which are listed in Singapore....

NASA image of 2013 haze over southeast Asia

The dirty business of palm oil

Nils Klawitter in Spiegel Interntional: ...Bangku is located at the center of Indonesia's Sumatra island. It's a city full of people that have been pushed off their property and has been a flash point for years in one of the country's bloodiest land conflicts. Palm oil is at the center of the dispute. Almost every second product available in today's supermarkets contains the cheap natural resource, which is often labeled as "vegetable oil," masking its true identity. Palm oil can be found in shampoos, but also in margarine, frozen pizzas, ice cream and lipstick.

There are hundreds of conflicts over land with palm oil companies in Indonesia, but Bungku is considered to be one of the worst. The area's forest, which once provided nourishment to those who lived there, fell victim to the giant palm oil plantations of the firm Asiatic Persada in the mid-1980s. In the following years, the company's bulldozers illegally claimed a further 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) of rain forest -- an area about half the size of Berlin. Included were areas for which indigenous people's held guaranteed land rights. But they were of little use against the palm oil industry.

On numerous occasions, mercenaries drove out village residents who attempted to return to the "land of our forefathers," as they say. The most recent incident happened only months ago. It's an unequal battle because it essentially pits tribal people against the henchmen of multinational behemoths like Wilmar.

Asia's leading agricultural concern supplies food companies like Anglo-Dutch consumer goods producer Unilever or Swiss multinational Nestlé. And for years Wilmar owned Asiatic Persada.

..."The World Bank also bears some responsibility for the death toll," says Feri Irawan, an environmental activist based in the nearby city of Jambi who has been observing the conflict for years. Irawan says the World Bank long showered Wilmar with loans, in complete disregard for the company's tangle of land conflicts...

A palm oil concession in Riau, Sumatra, shot by Hayden, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Indonesia’s adaptation and mitigation efforts

Indroyono Soesilo in the Jakarta Post: ...Indonesia plays a dual role in climate change issues, taking its impact but also being able to provide solutions on global carbon absorption and in oxygen emission. Global warming takes its course in Indonesia with surface temperatures increasing from 0.2 to 0.3 of a degree Celsius per decade.

This impacts precipitation patterns, causing a wetter climate in Sumatra and Kalimantan but drier seasons in Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara. Decreased rainfall during critical times of the year may increase high drought risk, while increased rainfall during already wet times of the year may lead to high flood risk.

Climate change in Indonesia will also produce stronger and more frequent El Niño/La Nina events and will exacerbate drying and/or flooding trends and could lead to decreased food production and increased hunger.

Meanwhile, due to global warming, the sea-level rise in the coastal areas of Indonesia will be increasing at the rate of 3-5 millimeter per year making more people at risk of flooding and seawater intrusion. Indonesia’s abundant biodiversity and ecosystem services are also threatened, 50 percent of its total biodiversity is at risk, 80 percent of its coral reefs are in severe condition because of warming sea-surface temperatures, sea level rise and other added stresses.

Climate change causes significant declines in fish larvae abundance and large-scale changes in fish habitat, such as skipjack tuna, while the massive coral bleaching leads to widespread loss of coral reefs and biodiversity, including the fish that many Indonesians rely on for food and livelihoods.

On land, more frequent forest fires are having significant impacts on Indonesia’s wildlife habitats and biodiversity and translating into serious economic and domestic as well as transboundary pollution consequences...

Rainforest understory in Lambir Hills National Park, shot by Mike Shanahan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Indonesia: New disaster management software released worldwide

A press release from the World Bank: A new version of software that can predict the social and human impact of natural disasters was released in Indonesia on 7 April 2014. Dr Syamsul Maarif, the Head of Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), launched the updated version of InaSAFE 2.0, software tool jointly developed by BNPB, Australia and the World Bank.

Dr Maarif said that the InaSAFE tools will help improve disaster preparedness in Indonesia by providing a new way to combine scientific hazard information and community knowledge on disaster risk. “It enables production of realistic natural hazard impact scenarios for better planning, preparedness and response training activities, by incorporating a range of natural hazard information, such as earthquake, volcanoes, tsunami or flood; and exposure data, such as the spatial distribution of population, roads or critical infrastructure,” Dr Maarif said.

Australia’s Minister-Counsellor for Development Cooperation in Indonesia, Jean-Bernard Carrasco, said InaSAFE 2.0 includes the ability to work with road data, including a capability to download roads maps directly from the online mapping tool OpenStreetMap (OSM). The new functions could help when planning possible evacuation and emergency response routes.

“With the help of Australian Government agency Geoscience Australia and the Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction, over 1.3 million buildings in Indonesia have already been mapped in OSM and this data is being incorporated into InaSAFE”, Mr Carrasco said.

The updated software is compatible with the free and open source Geographic Information System QGIS 2.0, and allows users to import spatial data from remote sources and create custom impact map templates....

Training teachers of Pune University (in India, not Indonesia) in disaster management, shot by Kumarrakajee, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

UCLA study yields more accurate data on thousands of years of climate change

UCLA Newsroom: Using a cutting-edge research technique, UCLA researchers have reconstructed the temperature history of a region that plays a major role in determining climate around the world.  The findings, published online Feb. 27 in the journal Nature Geoscience, will help inform scientists about the processes influencing global warming in the western tropical Pacific Ocean.

The study analyzes how much temperatures have increased in the region near Indonesia, and how ocean temperatures affect nearby tropical glaciers in Papua New Guinea and Borneo. Researchers also evaluated the accuracy of existing climate model predictions for that region. The findings illustrate that the region is very sensitive to climate change and that it has warmed considerably over the last 20,000 years, since the last ice age.

The team chose the specific area examined in the study because it is Earth's warmest open ocean region and a primary source of heat and water vapor to the atmosphere. As a result, temperature changes there can influence climate not just regionally, but globally.

"The tropical Pacific ocean-atmosphere system has been called a sleeping dragon because of how it can influence climate elsewhere," said lead author Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the departments of Earth, planetary and
space sciences, and atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

...As part of the study, Tripati and her colleagues also investigated what sets the past and present height of glaciers in the tropics, and why they have been retreating. To accurately estimate the height of tropical glaciers and average temperatures at altitude in this region, they found that atmospheric mixing, through a process known as entrainment, needs to be factored in.

"We found that the large amount of ocean warming goes a long way to explaining why glaciers have retreated so much," said Tripati, a faculty member in the College of Letters and Science and a member of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. "Throughout the region, they have retreated by close to a kilometer since the last ice age, and are predicted to disappear in the next one to three decades. Previously understanding this large-scale glacial retreat has been a puzzle. Our results help resolve this problem."...

A NASA image of the Grasberg (Freeport) copper mine pit is in the foreground, and remnants of Indonesia's Puncak Jaya glaciers behind

How global forest-destroyers are turning over a new leaf

Bill Laurance in Terra Daily via the Conversation: Indonesia is the world's biggest destroyer of forests and four multinational corporations - APP, APRIL, Wilmar and Golden Agri Resources - have been responsible for much of it. Until recently these mega-corporations were considered environmental pariahs, but suddenly things seem to be changing, with all four proclaiming "no deforestation" policies. What gives?

APP and APRIL are giant paper-pulp corporations. Collectively, they've cleared several million hectares of native Indonesian rainforest and other lands to grow fast-growing pulpwoods, turning the original rainforest into pulp in the process. Wilmar and Golden Agri Resources are the world's two biggest producers of palm oil - a key driver of forest destruction across the tropics, especially in southeast Asia.

Golden Agri Resources led the way, announcing a no-deforestation policy in 2011. Under growing pressure, its sister company APP (Asia Pulp and Paper) followed suit early last year.

APP's metamorphosis was especially stunning. For years, APP had thumbed its nose at critics while bulldozing ever more forest. This was easy for it to do because APP is largely a privately held corporation and because countries such as China and India - which generally don't fuss too much about the environment - snapped up much of its pulp and paper products.

But gradually, the tide turned against APP. Its critics mounted, its reputation turned increasingly toxic, and it began to lose more and more market share. By this point, it had cleared vast expanses of native forest for plantations, and so had less need for more forest clearing....

The last batch of sawnwood from the peat forest in Indragiri Hulu, Riau Province, Indonesia. Deforestation for oil palm plantation. Shot by Aidenvironment, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Climate change threatens Indonesians' way of life: Kerry

Arshad Mohammed in Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Indonesians on Sunday that climate change could threaten their "entire way of life" as he called for all nations to do more to stop global warming.

Speaking to students, Kerry derided skeptics of the view that human activity causes global warming as "shoddy scientists" and "extreme ideologues" and he said big companies and special interests should not be allowed to "hijack" the climate debate.

Aides said the U.S. secretary of state had chosen Indonesia for the first of what is to be a series of speeches on the topic this year partly because as an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands it is particularly at risk from rising sea levels.

"Because of climate change, it's no secret that today Indonesia is...one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth," Kerry said in speech at a high-tech U.S.-funded cultural center at a Jakarta mall. "It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk," he added.

Kerry's public push takes place against the backdrop of a negotiation among nearly 200 nations about a possible new global treaty on climate change that is scheduled to be agreed next year and to address greenhouse gas emissions from 2020....

Floods force thousands to evacuate in Indonesian capital

Kanupriya Kapoor in Reuters: Monsoon rains have inundated parts of the Indonesian capital, forcing more than 30,000 people to evacuate and posing a challenge for its wildly popular governor, Joko Widodo, a possible presidential candidate. Soldiers were deployed to help nearly 50,000 residents in the sprawling city of 10 million people, as floodwaters reached three meters (9.8 ft) in some districts, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said.

Last year's rainy season brought Jakarta to a standstill, causing a river in the city to breach its banks and swamp the central business district, leaving thousands stranded and causing $580 million in damage to property and companies.

Heavy rains are forecast this week, potentially worsening floods which have killed seven people, mostly from electrocution, and forced thousands to seek refuge at temporary shelters, including schools and mosques.

Jokowi, as the governor is known locally, came to office in late 2012 with promises to improve the city's creaky infrastructure, strained by chronic floods and traffic. The presidential favorite has since launched a number of initiatives to alleviate flooding, including clearing riverbanks of illegal housing and rubbish, and creating more green spaces and drainage to absorb rainwater.

But until those efforts show results, he could face criticism over flood management, especially if the waters rise and more districts are affected. The floods have already caused about $80 million in damage, said the Disaster Mitigation Agency...

A car during a January 2013 flood in Jakarta, VOA Indonesian Service

Indonesia floods leave 13 dead, tens of thousands displaced

Channel Newsasia: At least 13 people have been killed and 40,000 have fled their homes after torrential rain triggered flash floods and landslides on Indonesia's northern Sulawesi island, officials said on Thursday.

Rivers on the island's northern tip overflowed and burst their banks, sending torrents of water surging through the city of Manado and surrounding areas that swept away poorly-constructed houses and vehicles.

People waded through waist-deep water to get to safety, while some took to rubber dinghies to escape the rapidly rising flood waters. Many of those displaced took shelter in government buildings and churches in the Christian pocket of Muslim-majority Indonesia.

National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho described the flash floods as "massive", adding the rains had also triggered numerous landslides across the mountainous region. "Thirteen people were killed, two are missing and 40,000 people have been evacuated," he said....

Manado Bay in North Sulawesi, shot in 2009 by Sakurai Midori, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license 

Indonesian palm oil firm to pay losses in 'historic' ruling

Seed Daily via AFP: An Indonesian court has ordered a palm oil company to pay almost $30 million to the state for illegally clearing peatland in a "historic" ruling, lawyers said Thursday. The Meulaboh district court on Sumatra island ruled late Wednesday that Indonesian company Kallista Alam had illegally burnt vegetation on 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of peatland in Aceh province to clear it for a palm oil plantation.

In the civil case brought by the Ministry of Environment, the court ordered the company to pay 114.3 billion rupiah ($9.4 million) in losses to the state and 252 billion rupiah to rehabilitate the land it destroyed.

The forest was protected under several laws, including a presidential decree suspending new permits to log peatland and some other types of forests across the country. Using fire to clear land is also illegal. The practice has sent choking haze across parts of Southeast Asia in recent years.

"This is a historic moment for law enforcement on environmental issues in Indonesia. We hope it will deter plantation companies from damaging the environment," the environment ministry's lawyer, Syafruddin, told AFP....

On a palm plantation in Indonesia, shot by Wagino 20100516, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Indonesia struggles to clean up corrupt forestry sector

Terra Daily via AFP: Deep in the forests of Borneo island, workmen from an Indonesian timber company fell a tree with a chainsaw, stick a red tag with a serial number onto it and attach a corresponding stub to the stump.

This is all part of an arduous auditing process, one of many government attempts to clamp down on illegal logging and clean up one of the country's most corrupt and mismanaged sectors as Western countries demand proof their timber imports are legal.

Following an agreement signed with the European Union in September, Jakarta is rolling out a system under which companies holding government-issued permits are given a certificate to prove their wood is harvested within the law. Indonesia, Asia's leading exporter of timber to the EU, is hoping the pact will help it double timber exports to Europe to the tune of $2 billion a year.

But critics say logging permits considered legal are often obtained through illegal means, and laws passed in Europe, the US and Australia to give consumers a clear conscience do little to tackle under-the-table transactions that compromise the sector....

Logging in Borneo in 1926, from the Tropenmuseum via Wikimedia Commons

Indonesia reaction to climate talks

Dessy Sagita in the Jakarta Globe: Indonesia expressed mixed reactions following the conclusion of the Climate Change talks in Warsaw, Poland which reached a consensus on the commitment to a global climate change adaptation program.

“With the conclusion we can hope that UNFCCC (The United Nation’s Framework Conference on Climate Change) can provide the opportunity for the developing countries to end our vulnerability when it comes to the climate change adaptation program,” Ari Muhammad, the Secretary Working group on Adaptation to the National Council on Climate Change (DNPI), said.

...In the Warsaw text, negotiators notably replaced the word “commitments” for nationally-determined emissions cuts, with “contributions”. Ari said if developed countries want the developing countries to proceed with their climate change adaptation program, there must be a serious commitment from the richer countries to support their efforts. “Developing countries and the developed countries are in dire need of support and global commitment from developed countries,” he said.

Ari said there was one pressing issue that did not find a solution during the talks. “In adaptation, there are four main agendas — National Adaptation Plan, Lost and Damage, Nairobi Work Program and the Adaptation Committee — that we unfortunately did find an agreement in term[s] of lost and damage,” he said.

Developing countries including Indonesia, he said, believe that an institution specifically dealing with loss and damage because of climate change must be set up while the developed countries think that such an institution will not be necessary. “Regardless the effort to tackle the impact of climate change, loss and damage because of global warming have happened. Look at typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines or the Forest Fires in Riau,” he said...

Nine killed in Papua New Guinea landslide

Space Daily via AFP: Nine people were feared dead Monday after a landslide tore through a village in Papua New Guinea's rugged Highlands region burying homes, reports said.

Villagers were sleeping when the massive slip of earth, trees and debris crashed down a mountain side on Saturday night onto Kenagi village on the border of Eastern Highlands province, the Post Courier newspaper said.

Local councillor David Nondo said one body, of a 10-year-old boy, had been recovered but it would take days to dig up the dead from the landslide which cut the crucial Highlands Highway."The area is now a burial ground and we do not want people passing through at will," Nondo told the paper....

Forest people ‘can gather carbon data’

Alex Kirby in Climate News Network: You don’t have to be a sophisticated scientist equipped with all the latest gizmos in order to work out just how effective a particular forest is as a carbon sink, a critical way of soaking up greenhouse gases

The job, researchers believe, can be done just as accurately by the people who live in the forests, most of whom probably have neither modern instruments nor scientific training. And the forests themselves will probably gain as well, because the local people will have more reason to feel they are buying into the trees’ conservation and so will have an incentive to protect them and work with conservationists from outside the forests.

The study, Community Monitoring for REDD+: International Promises and Field Realities, was published in a special issue of the journal Ecology and Society and was carried out by researchers at the Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and colleagues from Europe and south-east Asia.

It is on the agenda at the Oslo Redd Exchange, which aims to improve the workings of the UN’s Redd+ programme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The team studied some of south-east Asia’s most complex, carbon-rich forests: lowland forest in Indonesia, mountain rainforest in China and monsoon forest in Laos and Vietnam....

River, village and forest. Puncak, West Java, Indonesia. Shot by What's in a name..., Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

One word may save Indonesia's forests

John Hudson in Bloomberg News: Indonesia’s forest and peatland fires have flared up again this season, sending smoke and haze from the island of Sumatra north across the Malacca Strait to Malaysia. The fires are now an annual consequence of the mismanagement of Indonesia’s forests. With the removal of a single word from the country’s constitution, however, that may change for the better.

On May 16, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court deleted the word “state” from this clause: “Customary forests are state forests located in the areas of custom-based communities.” That one adjustment denied the government ownership of forests on the lands of the nation’s indigenous people. By returning the forests to their traditional stewards, the court’s ruling could come close to turning off Indonesia’s greenhouse-gas spigot. Yet more work is needed.

In practice, the change means the central and local governments will no longer be able to grant leases to logging, plantation and mining companies in forests of indigenous people. The consequences of government control are visible from satellite photos showing enormous loss of forests and peatlands, as well as the fires that have resulted. Today, the World Bank ranks Indonesia as the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

This pattern of development has brought little benefit to the tens of millions of indigenous people, whose customary forests account for 30 percent of Indonesia’s total, according to AMAN, the National People’s Indigenous Organization. These communities have lost access to these lands, and fights over them have added to religious and ethnic conflicts over the last 40 years. Those who challenged the forest giveaways were imprisoned or even killed.

That was a tragedy. There is strong evidence from the Amazon and elsewhere that indigenous communities are the best stewards of the forests and prioritize keeping their lands intact even as they strive for economic improvement. Countries with increasing areas of forests, such as Chile, China, India, South Korea and Vietnam, have embraced land reforms and other policy changes that include the return of forest ownership to indigenous people....

NASA image of smoke over Sumatra