Indonesia’s Ambitious Rainforest Plan Not Going So Well

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/67461597@N00/379412462/">Claude BARUTEL</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A little more than a year ago, Indonesia enacted a moratorium on deforestation, and got major finanial backing from the US and Norway to make it happen. But now halfway into its two-year moratorium, it is still a long way from meeting its goal of cutting carbon emissions by saving the rainforest, according to a recent article from the journal Nature.

The Norway-US partnership provided $1 billion to Indonesia to protect its forested lands, with the goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 26 percent by 2020. The moratorium was meant to be a temporary time-out on chopping down the rainforest, and during the two years, the Indonesian government was supposed to develop a sustainable forestry plan that it would implement when the moratorium lifted. Indonesia’s goal is more ambitous than what we’ve seen from other major emerging economies. However, improved forest maps and data gathering have found that, so far, the moratorium is not having the effect many had hoped for:

Progress is slow in part because the clearance-permit ban is not as radical as it at first seemed. An analysis from CIFOR [the Center for International Forestry Research], published last October, found that 42.5 million hectares of forest covered by the moratorium are already protected under Indonesian law, with only 22.5 million hectares receiving extra protection.

An updated version of Indonesia’s forest map, published last week, shows that the government has included a further 862,000 hectares of forest under the ban, but it has also excluded another 482,000 hectares, so the net additional protected forest is 380,000 hectares. It is not yet clear what kinds of forest are covered by the changes.

Beyond this miscalculation, there have also been reports of illegal activity despite the moratorium, due to a number of loopholes. The government has been repeatedly criticized for not addressing the continued deforestation despite the moratorium.

The combination of strong corporate interests and rampant political corruption in Indonesia made observers more than a bit nervous when the $1 billion partnership was announced back in 2010. But this type of partnership is a major component of plans to cut emissions worldwide, and the world is watching the success or failure of Indonesia’s effort.

Indonesia’s ability to actually enact this ban is extremely important for protecting rainforests. The nearly 18,000 islands that make up the country are home to the largest expanse of rainforest in Asia and the third-largest tropical rainforest in the world. The Rainforest Action Network reports that 80 percent of Indonesia was foreststed as recently as the 1960s. However, demand for commodities like pulp, paper and palm oil has caused an infiltration into the rainforests of Southeat Asia. Indonesia now has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, according to RAN, with more than 2.4 million acres lost each year. 

With one year left on the ban, stronger enforcement and better analysis of forested areas for conservation-value and carbon storage potential are necessary for Indonesia to continue progress towards emissions reduction.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate