As a major conference on forestry opened in Jakarta, Southeast Asian officials in attendance talked up efforts to achieve environmentally friendly growth, while also pointing to the need for more.
“We are reforming our forest management to a higher level of sustainability,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared in the opening speech, describing government initiatives that include planting trees and a ban on clearing primary, or old-growth, forests, as well as swampy peat land that locks up large quantities of carbon. “As a result, trees are taking root and forests are gaining more footholds.”
But Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest forest area, has one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation. While some forests have regenerated over the past decade, a study published last November in the journal Science showed that the amount of forest lost in 2011-2012, at 20,000 square kilometers, was nearly twice the earlier annual average. Changes in land use are responsible for nearly 80% of the climate-altering carbon dioxide Indonesia emits.
Some of those attending the summit said Mr. Yudhoyno’s speech merely recounted past promises. In a statement, environmental organization Greenpeace said the president’s work on forest protection “risked going up in smoke” if he didn’t use the last few months of his presidency to strengthen conservation laws.
The conference, hosted by the Center for International Forestry Research, comes more than two years after Mr. Yudhoyono said he would devote the remainder of his presidency, which ends when he reaches his two-term limit this July, to protecting the country’s forests.
Since then he has established an agency to slow deforestation and declared a moratorium on new licenses for logging and other activities in natural forests and peatlands. In his speech, Mr. Yudhoyono called on his successor to prolong the moratorium, set to end next year. He also described efforts to educate communities about the dangers of “slash-and-burn” agriculture, in which fields are cleared for planting by cutting down and burning the existing vegetation—a practice blamed for the smoke and haze that blanketed Singapore and Malaysia last year, sparking a diplomatic row.
Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s environment minister, told those in attendance that they needed to be frank about the problem of deforestation.
“The reason companies burn forests and engage in unsustainable degradation of land is because of profit,” he said, while acknowledging that a number of companies have recently committed to practices that seek to preserve rather than destroy forests.
Unilever PLC has committed to tracking the source of its palm oil all the way down to the plantation level to ensure the sources are sustainable. Giant Asia Pulp & Paper recently committed to protecting and restoring one million hectares of natural forest in Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo.
Other companies including Colgate-Palmolive Co., Nestle SA and and Procter & Gamble Co. have also pledged to eliminate forest destruction from their supply chains.
Yet more progress was needed, said Mr. Balakrishnan.
“The root cause is commercial, the main victims are local and the solution requires collaboration and effective, decisive action on the parts of governments, NGOs and local communities,” he said.
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