On the run for climate projects

Seventy percent of Indonesia is covered with tropical forest. This makes the country third in the world rankings of tropical forests, after Brazil and Congo. Indonesia is also the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and USA. This has everything to do with the high rate of deforestation, responsible for 83 percent of Indonesia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

As an archipelago with 17,000 islands, this small South Asian country is particularly vulnerable to the impact of global warming.

In September 2009, the eve of the climate summit in Copenhagen, the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases with 26 percent by 2020 and 41 percent if the international community would give its support. This extensive commitment of Indonesia made the country the pilot project of the UN international climate working group for forests and forest restoration, which also develops financial mechanisms in the context of REDD +. Indonesia’s president signed an agreement with Norway last year, in which Norway promises 738.40 million euro for Indonesia’s sustainable forest management. A commendable initiative but the implementation appears very complex.

Paper pulp production

Indonesia may have a lot of forest, the pressure on the land has increased dramatically over the past decade. Millions of hectares of valuable forests and marshes were cleared to make way for palm oil plantations and pulp production. Also the present government wants to encourage economic growth through these practices: they want to triple the pulp production in the coming years and clear 28 million extra hectares in order to do so, while the production of palm oil should double in the coming years. How this is compatible with forest conservation and achieving a “low carbon economy” is unclear.

State within the state

Fifty to seventy million Indonesians live on territory that is called “state forest”, a term dating from the Dutch colonization, when they confiscated all forests in the country. Also during the dictatorship of Suharto – who was in power from 1967 to 1998 — sixty percent of the land was “state forest”. The term is very loaded today. The Ministry of Forests is still refusing to acknowledge the traditional communities as legitimate residents. They are often considered “illegal invaders” and the pressure on their traditional existence increases with the pressure on the forests. Moreover, there are powerful interest groups in the game.

Another burdensome legacy is the Ministry of Forests itself. It operates in some cases as a state within the state — in cooperation with the army, the police and the private sector — to undermine the initiatives of the president. It thwarts all efforts to build a climate and environmental policy in partnership with local communities. A study by David Fogarty (Reuters journalist, study published in August) found that the Minister of Forests had given away land that was reserved for the UN-REDD + project with support of the government to a company for oil palm plantations. According to Fogarty, the Ministry of Forests receives annually no less than 11.07 billion euro in licenses of dealers. The notorious Department has a long history of corruption, violence and human rights abuses, often related to logging, oil palm plantations and the paper industry.

International lenders

The weak institutional framework is also a burden to the climate programs. This spring the news came that in Sumatra, in the provinces of Jambi and South Sumatra, forest dwellers were victims of intimidation and threats by police and security forces. They were working for the famous Reki project (Restorasi Ekosistem Indonesia), a forest recovery project set up by Indonesian and international environmental organizations, which received two concessions of 50,000 hectares each to restore the forest. The original inhabitants are forced to leave the area, creating a stream of people fleeing for climate projects.

The REKI project receives financial support from the German Government, Singapore Airlines, Conservation International, the European Union and several European environment organisations. The Indonesian Ministry of Forests and Birdlife Indonesia also asked the World Bank for funds for a training program, through the special environmental fund ‘Global Environment Facility’. Initially, the World Bank would give its approval in November 2010 but that got postponed to November 2011. However, several authorities put pressure on the World Bank and pointed out the context of corruption, violence and human rights violations. They are asking the international donors to install stringent criteria and monitoring mechanisms in order to raise transparency in the transactions and to ensure the rights of indigenous communities. Ultimately, the World Bank decided not to support the projec

The World Bank however has a design for a new funding program: Program for Results (P4R). The draft states that 25 of the guarantee criteria that the World Bank normally applies, do not apply to P4R mechanisms. These criteria include impact on the environment, natural habitat, weed control, indigenous people and involuntary resettlement of people. It argues that this is not necessary, since it is about “nature restoration programs” . Some also feel that there should not be severe interventions during the pilot phase. This was discussed in Washington by World Bank managers, REDD experts and NGOs (including 11.11.11.) early October.

It looks like the international institutions want to come up with success stories quickly, in order to provide even more funding for future REDD + programs. Local communities and NGOs are ringing the alarm bell and insist not to rush in.