A top Indonesian official has declared a halt to new oil palm plantations in the country’s heavily forested West Papua region in favour of other – “greener” – crops, apparently contradicting his vigorous earlier defences of the industry.

The remarks by Luhut Pandjaitan, the chief minister in charge of investments, including in the palm oil industry, come in the wake of a court verdict ordering the government to publish maps and concession-holder details for plantations in Papua.

“We agree that [we] no longer want palm oil development here [in Papua],” Luhut said on February 27 as quoted by CNN Indonesia. “We’ve announced a moratorium on [new] palm oil [plantations] but now we’re strengthening it.”

READ MORE: Activists sceptical of win as court orders Papua plantation maps published

Luhut, speaking during a visit to the district of Sorong in West Papua province, said the companies investing in the palm oil industry in Papua were predominantly foreign ones or those controlled by wealthy Indonesian businesses, and that their investments “don’t necessarily benefit local people.”

“Don’t [let] only rich people cut down the forests and destroy us all,” he added.

‘Not being consistent’
Edi Sutrisno, the executive director of TuK Indonesia, an NGO that advocates for social justice in the agribusiness sector, questioned the about face by Luhut, widely seen as the Indonesian government’s most vocal defender of the palm oil industry.

“We’re confused because he’s not being consistent,” Edi told Mongabay. “So far, he’s been the main supporter of palm oil. So why did he issue such a statement?”

Luhut has led Indonesia’s diplomatic battle against European Union’s plans to end recognition of palm oil as a biofuel by 2030, even threatening to withdraw Indonesia from the Paris climate agreement in retaliation.

He also owns, through his family-run conglomerate, a string of palm oil companies. Last year, he declared palm oil a key commodity for Indonesia, which is the world’s top producer, and credited the industry with helping to alleviate poverty. (An estimated 20 million Indonesians are engaged in the palm oil industry.)

“We’ll fight whoever hampers the development of the palm oil industry in Indonesia,” Luhut said last April as quoted by local media. “The palm oil industry has played a significant role in reducing the poverty rate and creating jobs.”

Papua is home to a large variety of indigenous communities and Indonesia’s last great expanse of tropical rainforest. It’s an area increasingly targeted by the plantation and logging companies that have depleted much of the tropical rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo.

The combined area of oil palm concessions in the Papua region, comprised of the provinces of West Papua and Papua, is 18,099 sq km, according to the latest figure from Papua Atlas. Papua Atlas is a real-time interactive map showing the spread of plantations and roads in Papua region developed by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

A fifth of that figure, or 3,914 km2 (1,510 mi2), was controlled by just seven conglomerates as of 2017, according to a report by TuK Indonesia. That figure includes both developed (cleared) and undeveloped land.

“These figures show that palm oil plantation development in … Papua is almost exclusively in the hands of tycoon-controlled groups,” TuK Indonesia said in its report.

‘There’s no point’
Luhut said there were other crops better suited for the Papua region than oil palm, such as nutmeg, coffee, cacao and seaweed, which he presented to potential investors during his visit to Sorong in a “green investment” pitch.

“With green investment, people will start economic activities,” Luhut said as reported by CNN Indonesia. “The nature-based economy [will] grow and people can reap social benefits from it.”

He added the concept of green investment would contribute to protecting the forests of Papua, home to the third-largest expanse of tropical forest in the world, after the Amazon and the Congo Basin, and maintain the region as an important carbon sink in the fight against climate change.

The plan calls for $200 million in investments, said to directly benefit 60,000 households in the Papua region. He said Starbucks had agreed to invest there.

But activists are skeptical about the proposed switch, raising concerns that large-scale deforestation for palm plantations will simply be replaced by large-scale deforestation for other crops.

Franky Samperante, the director of Pusaka, an NGO that works with indigenous communities across Indonesia, said the problem with industrial-scale agriculture in Papua was not the commodity, but the development model. The top-down model as it works now, he said, fails to prioritize the needs of the local and indigenous communities, and fails to recognize their rights.

He cited the example of nutmeg, now being grown on land from which indigenous tribes were evicted in the district of Fakfak in West Papua province.

“So Luhut’s statement needs to be clarified,” Franky told Mongabay. “Green investment doesn’t only mean sustainable but we also need to ask who does it side with? If it’s only green but doesn’t side with the people, then there’s no point.”

The governor of West Papua, Dominggus Madacan, also advised residents against selling out their land to investors. He said history had shown that those who did so were inevitably impacted by deforestation and environmental degradation, including landslides.

“If you sell the land, the trees all around will be cut down and you’ll be left with bare land,” Dominggus said in Manokwari district on Feb. 25. “Then when disaster strikes, who will you blame?”

‘Textbook land grab’
Edi said the plan to invest in crops other than palm oil was similar to the government’s Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) programme, launched in 2011 to turn Papua’s Merauke district into the “future breadbasket of Indonesia.” That project, pitched by the government as the answer to Indonesia’s food security needs, has become a “textbook land grab”, activists say.

Only two of the 10 proposed blocks in the MIFEE project are supposed to include oil palm, but Greenpeace has noted that “significantly” more oil palm concessions will be included.

“They said that MIFEE was aimed to develop rice fields, but instead it’s oil palm plantations that are being developed,” Edi said. “Don’t let the statement [by Luhut] be a manipulation to make it seem like other commodities will be developed to make the public open to the idea, when in the end it’s all about palm oil.”

He said that despite the talk of prioritizing other crops deemed to be “green,” the fact remains that palm oil continues to be the most privileged in terms of incentives and other favorable policies offered by the government.

“The tendency is for the government to give incentives only for palm oil, not for other commodities,” Edi said. “So if civil society is sceptical, it’s normal because we don’t see incentives for other crops, such as cacao. Are there any factories to process cacao in Papua?”

Franky said he was concerned the voices of indigenous Papuans would be silenced, as they have been during the palm oil rush, under the plan to attract “green investments” to the region.

“In the meeting [on green investment in Sorong], I didn’t see representatives from local communities,” he said. “I only saw representatives from the local government. So I don’t know what the people think about it. The voices so far continue to be those of the central [government] and the investors there.”

Enforcing the moratorium
Franky said that if Luhut was serious, he should follow up his latest stance with concrete action.

“There needs to be a strong policy to support Luhut’s statement,” he said. “We can’t just accept a statement from an official who’s a politician and has investments there.”

He said there needed to be stronger enforcement of a prevailing moratorium on issuing new plantation permits, as well as greater scrutiny of existing permits. President Joko Widodo imposed the moratorium in September 2018 in response to fires in 2015 that razed large swaths of forest, including inside oil palm concessions. The moratorium is expected to end no later than September 2021.

But enforcement of the moratorium has been patchy, according to a report by Pusaka. It shows that the agrarian ministry, in charge of approving the plantation permits known as HGU, issued one to the company PT Permata Nusa Mandiri for a concession Papua’s Jayapura district in November 2018 — two months after the moratorium was enacted.

The report also identified continued instances of deforestation in areas earmarked for plantations, with 2,285 sq km of forest cleared last year.

Given how much land has already been allocated for oil palm plantations, the government must conduct a sweeping review of the issued permits and do more to recognise indigenous claims to disputed land, Franky said.

Short of that, he said, Luhut’s statement will ring hollow.

The government’s lack of recognition indigenous land rights is the missing key to the development of Papua, Franky said. Indonesia is home to hundreds of indigenous groups, but for decades their land rights were trumped by state control over all public land in the country.

In 2013, a historic Constitutional Court ruling removed customary forests from under state control. Since then, President Widodo has vowed to grant customary forest ownership titles to indigenous groups.

The Papua region, covering the western half of the island of New Guinea, is home to the greatest number of indigenous groups in Indonesia, but none have been granted titles to their ancestral forests.

In Papua province alone, an estimated 6,400 sq km of forest qualifies as customary land.

Republished from Mongabay under a Creative Commons licence.

Thousands of forest fires have been burning across Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra, disrupting air travel, closing schools and sickening thousands of people, reports the New York Times.

Officials have said that about 80 per cent of the fires were intentionally set to make room for lucrative cash crops like oil palm.

Spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster management agency Agus Wibowo said that these “slash and burn tactics” were the quickest and cheapest method for farmers to clear the land of its carbon rich rainforests.

READ MORE: Precarious politics pose threats to world’s three biggest rainforests

WATCH: PMC Director David Robie discusses forest fires on TRT World Now

Aerial photographs have showed huge clouds of white smoke across vast areas of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, which is home to the endangered Orangutan.

The toxic haze from the fires has also been affecting neighbouring countries, with hundreds of schools in Malaysia forced to close, reports The Guardian.

Indonesian officials have reportedly attempted to deflect some of the blame for the smoke to fires in Malaysia.

“The Indonesian government has been systematically trying to resolve this to the best of its ability. Not all smog is from Indonesia,” said Indonesia’s Environment Minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar.

However, her Malaysian counterpart Yeo Bee Yin has since released data from the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC), which showed the total number of hotspots in Kalimantan was 474 and 387 in Sumatra. By comparison, only seven were recorded in Malaysia.

According to CNA News, Indonesian president Joko Widodo has said he has “made every effort” to extinguish the fires by deploying aircraft and 6000 troops to the hot spots and holding a “salat istisqa”- a prayer to Allah for rain in times of drought.

If nothing comes of the prayer, Coordinating Minister for Politics, Security and Legal Affairs Wiranto has said that the government will seed the clouds with chemicals to prompt “artificial rainfall”, reports Detik News.

While 200 people have been arrested in relation to the fires, officials have said that air quality had been recorded as “unhealthy” or “very unhealthy” in Malaysia, Sarawak and Singapore.

Indonesian forest fires have been a major environmental and health issue in recent decades as dryer conditions and the growing global demand for palm oil exacerbate their spread.

The 2015 forest fires resulted in huge plumes of smoke reaching as far away as Cambodia. Research has estimated at least 23 million were affected and over 100,000 thousand were killed from respiratory related illnesses in Indonesia alone.

The cost to mitigate the 2015 haze was reported to be US$40 billion.

The fires in Indonesia have added to global alarm about the dire situation in Brazil, where blazes have consumed over 2 million acres of rainforest in the Amazon basin, known as the “lungs of the earth”.

ANALYSIS: By David Robie in Yogyakarta

In May, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo of Indonesia raised eyebrows across the archipelago when he inspected the Trans-Papua highway while trail blazing with a motorbike.

Tempo magazine, Indonesia’s most authoritative news magazine, remarked that he did this while “wearing only a thick jacket without a bullet proof vest”. Mentioning this lack of a flack jacket was tacit acknowledgement of the uncertain situation given an exponential rise of pro-independence sentiment in Indonesia’s two most eastern-most provinces of Papua and West Papua.

But Jokowi’s unconventional style of launching infrastructure projects didn’t just end there. Earlier this month he cruised along in a four-wheel drive vehicle on the recently completed Becakayu toll road, which had been languishing uncompleted for 18 years until his presidency gave the project a hurry up.

Last month, while giving a speech at Diponegoro University’s 60th Dies Natalis in Semarang, Central Java, Jokowi declared that infrastructure development was vitally important for the future in Indonesia. He wanted the country to become more competitive than its neighbours, such as Malaysia and Singapore.

“Why is our infrastructure being built?,” he asked rhetorically about the rapid pace and emphasis that he and Vice-President Jusuf Kalla have given the strategy – a marked contrast with other presidencies.

“The answer is that we want our competiveness to be better than other countries. Our global competiveness must be improved,” he said. “This year is pretty good as we have soared from 41st to 36th among 137 countries.”

The latest edition of Tempo magazine has devoted 38 pages to its cover story on infrastructure projects, headlining the fairly comprehensive report “Devil in the details”.

Few environmental reports
But absent from the range of quality articles was any serious report on the state of the environment in Indonesia — or environmental journalism, given that 2000 of the country’s 17,000 islands and 42 million households in a population of 261 million are at risk of “drowning” by 2050, according to a Listening Post report on Al Jazeera last month.

As Al Jazeera reported, “when you look at the [Indonesian] mainstream media, it is hard to find stories that go beyond catastrophes like forest fires or mudslides, examining who and what is behind them.”

A leading environmental journalism advocate has blamed lack of climate change and environmental reporting skills in Indonesian newsrooms for the lack of coverage.

“It is easier for journalists to cover sports or the economy, because they have scores and numbers,” Harry Surjadi, head of the Indonesian Society of Environmental Journalists, told Listening Post. “Those stories are much easier to write than environmental stories, where journalists have to understand biology, ecology, waste and chemistry.”

Nevertheless, Jokowi was praised by The Jakarta Post in a recent editorial for both his development policies and his concern for the poor of the country with his popularity  climbing.

“His overwhelming attention to the basic needs of the people has made him rather obsessive with the objective of keeping the prices of food and other basic necessities stable, thereby keeping inflation below 4 percent,” the Post noted.

However, in its special development edition, Tempo said in an editorial that the Widodo administration was “racing against time” after three years in government to complete its raft of planned infrastructure projects costing an estimated RP4,197 trillion (NZ$415 billion) between 2014 and 2019.

Many ambitious projects with an emphasis on developing the regions, especially eastern Indonesia — including Papua, are being worked on at the same time.

Projects’ sustainability
“All these activities spark public excitement, but also raise questions about the projects’ sustainability,” the magazine said.

“Jokowi’s choice to develop infrastructure is certainly not misplaced. Several studies show that infrastructure development in Indonesia was relatively backward in comparison with neighbours. Even worse: previous administrations spent more on fuel subsidies compared to physical construction,” Tempo commented.

In his Semarang speech, Jokowi said: “Why must we build? Because our country is an archipelago state, the marine foundation base is a must. Airport development was equally important as many islands could not be serviced by ship.

“So, on the remote islands of Natuna, Miangas, we are building an airport. This is just one example because we are building lots of small airports,” Jokowi added.

Tempo seemed to agree with this view by stating in its editorial: “In order to reach a healthy and growing economy, Indonesia needs new roads, bridges, power stations, airports and ports. This in turn requires massive funding.”

Some 42 percent of the required funding — the budget from the 2017 year has been almost tripled from RP177 trillion in Jokowi’s first year in office in 2014 to RP 4011 trillion this year — depends on allocations from the state budget, the magazine noted, plus money from state-owned businesses and private partnerships.

Tempo praised Jokowi for cutting back on energy subsidies, saying this was the right move to make – especially over fuel costs.

Sounding a warning
While also complimenting Jokowi on the boost for several jumbo projects that had stalled in recent years to ensure they get completed, Tempo also sounded a warning.

“Jokowi is racing against time. Infrastructure construction generally takes a while, and its economic benefits are only felt three to five years after construction begins: a time span which does not align with our five-year political cycle,” the magazine said.

“The government should avoid giving the impression that it is impatient to reap its rewards from the projects, especially once the cycle of political succession comes around. Good governance must not be abused for the sake of earning points for the next general elections [in 2019].”

Infrastructure highlights:
National: RP1,320 trillion (two programmes and 12 projects).

Bali and Nus Tenggara: RP11 trillion (15 projects, including the North Timor border crossing and supporting facilities).

Java Island: RP1,065 trillion (903 projects, including the 81km Serang-Panimbang toll road, MRT underground in Jakarta and public trains/railway).

Kalimantan: RP564 trillion (24 projects, including border crossings and facilities and the Serang-Balikpapan-Samarinda toll road).

Maluku and Papua: RP444 trillion (13 projects, including development of the Tangguh Train 3 LNG plant and the Palapa ring broadband).

Sulawesi: RP155 trillion (27 projects, including the Manado-Bitung toll road).

Sumatra: RP638 trillion (61 projects, including five sections of the Trans-Sumatra toll road).

According to a breakdown chart published by Tempo, partnerships with private companies would provide more than half the projected budget – 57.5 percent, with SOEs providing 30 percent and the balance of 12.5 percent from the state budget.

In a four-page interview with the magazine, Jokowi said that after touring across the country, from Sabang to Merauke, “I saw for myself how grave the inequality was”, and he was convinced that an expanded infrastructure would help reduce the gap.

“This is a matter of equality and justice. Besides, our infrastructure development has lagged far behind our neighbours,” he said.

“Infrastructure is a foundation for tackling the problem of inequality. If we want it easy, we just have to allocate the budget for subsidies and increased social assistance, so purchasing power will increase and the public is happy.

“But do we want to continue this kind of strategy? I took the risk by not resorting to this kind of political move, and instead diverted resources to infrastructure development.”

Yet surprisingly nothing in this otherwise comprehensive report addressed climate change and environmental issues, a critical component of sustainable development in Indonesia.

Forest fire devastation
Al Jazeera’s Listening Post report stressed how in 2015 huge fires swept through Indonesia’s rainforests. About 2.6 million hectares of forest was set ablaze to make way for palm oil plantations.

“The fires produced – in just three weeks – more greenhouse gases than Germany does in an entire year,” Listening Post said.

“Forest fires have become an annual occurrence in Indonesia, and still, the country’s media seldom devote the column centimetres and airtime needed to explore the causes behind them.”

Merah Ismail, campaign manager for the mining advocacy network JATAM, was quoted as saying: “When [the media] do cover forest fires or the effects of mining, they leave out “subjects like ‘water poisoned due to toxic waste or air pollution’ because they don’t know enough about those subjects”.

While Jokowi had announced in September 2015 that Indonesia would cut the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent by 2030, the nation’s news media have reported little on the progress, or lack of it, over this pledge — even with global debate on climate change at COP23 ongoing in Bonn this month.

With little media exposure or debate, the issue of the future of the rainforests has been framed as a tough choice – between the economy and the environment.

• How Jokowi has grown in the job
• Solving Indonesia’s infrastructure gap

A timber plantation company is illegally clearing one of Indonesia’s last coastal peat swamp forests, a carbon reservoir and biodiversity hotspot home to hundreds of endangered orangutans, say observers who are appealing to President Joko Widodo’s administration to intervene.

The company, PT Mohairson Pawan Khatulistiwa (MPK), did not respond to numerous requests for comment. But locals report the firm is digging a drainage canal through the peat soil in alleged violation of a moratorium on peatland development enshrined by Jokowi, as he is known, into law last December.

Draining peat soil — a deposit of decaying organic matter that can extend deep below the ground’s surface — is a prerequisite to planting it with the fast-growing pulpwood species that feed Indonesia’s paper mills, a huge industry in the archipelago country.

But the practice dries out the soil, rendering the peat highly flammable. Its widespread usage is the main underlying cause of Indonesia’s annual fires which often reach crisis proportions. In 2015, they made half a million people sick and pumped more carbon into the atmosphere than the entire EU during the same period.

A man who lives near the area PT MPK has been licensed to develop, and within the Sungai Putri forest block in question, confirmed the canal has reached eight kilometers in length and counting.

“The canal development is even at the moment going on and I’m sure by next week it will have reached more areas,” he said by phone last week, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.

“From what I’ve witnessed myself, there are two excavators operating to build the canal and some workers in the field. These activities kicked off around late December, but it only appeared clear what they were doing in January through March.”

The Sungai Putri landscape covers some 55,000 hectares in the Ketapang district of West Kalimantan province, along the southwestern coast of Borneo island. The area consists almost completely of peat, some of it many meters deep, according to a 2008 report by Fauna and Flora International.

“I went back there in 2009 and also 2014, and yes, it’s still peat,” Gusti Anshari, the Tunjung Pura University professor who conducted the study, said in an interview.

Sungai Putri supports an estimated 900-1,250 orangutans, “one of the largest unprotected populations in the whole of Indonesia,” according to a 2016 joint report by the Borneo Nature Foundation and International Animal Rescue. The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN.

Potentially at issue is how much of PT MPK’s concession is forested. The firm’s permit area overlaps largely with the Sungai Putri landscape studied by researchers.

Company documents obtained by Mongabay cite a figure of 35.1 percent forest coverage in the concession. The rest of the area is said to consist of mostly “scrub swamp” and “shrub swamp.”

The figures appear in a 2015 letter to PT MPK from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry; the letter suggests the data was produced by a consultant hired by the firm. (The permit was issued by the Ministry of Forestry in 2008, before it was combined with the Ministry of Environment.)

But researchers insist that much more of the area is forested.

“A 2016 satellite image confirms findings from a detailed 2007 vegetation study in Sungai Putri that about 58 percent of the 48,440 hectare license area remains covered in tall peat swamp forest and the remainder in medium height swamp forest, heath forest, and hill forest,” conservation biologist Erik Meijaard, who coordinates the Borneo Futures Initiative, wrote in a recent op-ed for Mongabay.

“Those estimates are still pretty accurate. When I was recently standing on a hill overlooking the area, I can say that for sure this is an extensive forest area, a bit damaged and degraded near the edges but certainly with tall forest in most of the remainder.”

He added in an interview: “If the conversion license was given out on the basis of wrong information, it needs to be retracted. It is the government’s responsibility to ensure that their processes are fair and lawful.”

The Rainforest Action Network has launched a petition demanding that President Jokowi intervene.

Gemma Tillack, the NGO’s chief agribusiness campaigner, called Sungai Putri “critical forest ecosystem” that “must be protected from palm oil and pulp development. Its intact peat forests are a source of livelihoods for local communities and important habitat” for the Bornean orangutan.

The Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG), which answers to the president, has been asked to independently verify the area’s physical characteristics in order to clear up any confusion.

Asked if the agency was aware of the canal development, BRG deputy Myrna Safitri said in an email that her side had met twice with the company and that it had agreed to change its logging plan under the supervision of the forestry ministry, after which a ground check would take place. She did not reply to a follow-up inquiry asking for specifics.

It remains unclear who owns PT MPK, although recent comments by Ketapang district head Martin Rantan suggest a link to a Chinese-owned investment firm. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Jakarta did not answer a request for comment.

Marcellinus Tjawan, head of the West Kalimantan Forestry Office, said he was taking the initiative to establish Sungai Putri as a protected area, but obstacles remained.

“All concerns about the environment and natural resources management certainly gets our full attention, but this is definitely not as easy as looks, particularly knowing the fact that permits from the central government are involved,” he said.

The Forestry Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Meijaard called for the company to cease and desist while stakeholders determine what to do.

“Maybe the deforested fringes of Sungai Putri can be developed for plantations so that the land use is stabilised and some of the revenues are used to protect the forested center,” he said.

“Maybe companies around Sungai Putri can contribute to the long term management of Sungai Putri’s core forest areas. But first we need to stop the needless destruction of the area.”

Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development. This article is republished under a Creative Commons licence BY-NC-ND.

The choking haze, which covered a vast expanse of Southeast Asia, killed more than 20 people and sickened at least half a million, offering a stark reminder that pollution and its pernicious effects do not respect national boundaries.

It will require local policy and enforcement in Indonesia along with regional cooperation to remedy this environmental and human health disaster

The more than 94,000 individual Indonesian fires are primarily the result of “slash and burn” land clearing, a practice in which landowners, both large and small, raze forested areas and burn the debris or drain peat bogs and incinerate carbon-rich peat deposits.

The fires clear and prepare land for planting crops or sometimes to interfere with their competitors’ operations.

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil, and farmers light fires to make way for more palm plantations, pulpwood, and other agricultural operations.

Most of the fires raged outside of official agricultural and pulpwood concessions, meaning they were set illegally, and many of these fires reduced protected forest and peatlands to charred fields.

Shifting weather patterns
Shifting weather patterns have contributed to the disaster, as an extended dry season has allowed the fires to burn longer and over a larger area than ever before.

The impacts from these fires are widespread, both geographically and in the types of damages they cause. Transboundary air pollution has in some places exceeded 2000 on the Pollutant Standard Index.

Anything above 300 is hazardous to human health. This air pollution causes widespread respiratory infections and premature deaths.

The fires have released more than 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide this year alone, tripling Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions and making it the fourth largest emitter of climate pollutants.

The fires have also devastated wildlife, threatening one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Endangered species, including Orangutans, have lost critical habitat. Many animals have been sickened by the smoke, and the flames have killed untold numbers.

In addition to environmental costs, estimates of the economic impacts exceed US$14 billion.

A transboundary disaster of this magnitude requires responses at all level of government. In 2014, Singapore passed the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, giving its government the authority to prosecute companies operating in Indonesia that cause air pollution in Singapore.

Haze pollution law
Also in 2014, Indonesia ratified the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, which, among other policies, improves fire monitoring.

Laws are only a starting point for improving environmental performance.

In 2015, faceless corporations and anonymous people have burned more land and created more transboundary pollution than in years past, despite new laws forbidding these practices.

In order to manage land for the benefit of people and the environment, nations have to take responsibility for enforcing existing laws and welcome international monitoring assistance.

National sovereignty must be respected, and yet Indonesia’s fires and haze violate the sovereignty of neighboring states. Pollution does not respect political boundaries.

The parties responsible for pollution, however, are subject to governmental authority. Only through cooperation and respect for the rule of law can governments make lasting environmental progress.

From Global Metrics for the Environment: The Environmental Performance Index ranks countries’ performance on high-priority environmental issues. The 2016 Environmental Performance Index is a project lead by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) and Yale Data-Driven Environmental Solutions Group at Yale University (Data-Driven Yale), the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, in collaboration with the Samuel Family Foundation, McCall MacBain Foundation, and the World Economic Forum. More information and references here.

A leader of a Jakarta-based indigenous people’s organisation has expressed disappointment at the agreement recently adopted at the Paris climate conference COP21, saying the pact failed to show recognition of tribal peoples.

Abdon Nababan, secretary-general of the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago, said tribal peoples’ position as keepers of forest and peatland ecosystems ¬ which are vital for climate change mitigation ¬ should be strongly recognised.

“What I hoped for isn’t included in the Paris agreement. The rights of indigenous people are only mentioned in the preamble instead of the operational text,” said Nababan, who particpated in the Paris summit.

On December 12, 196 nations voted to adopt the Paris agreement to curb global warming. The agreement acknowledges that “climate change is a common concern of humankind, parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous people”.

Nababan noted that President Joko Widodo firmly stated in his speech to the national leaders that indigenous people have played a significant role in curtailing climate change in Indonesia.

“If the Paris agreement is implemented in accordance with the president’s speech … such a failing shown by the Paris agreement can be fixed with concrete cooperation,” he said.

According to the alliance, indigenous people manage roughly 57 million hectares of Indonesia’s forests. Of this, 40 million hectares are protected.

Free from fires
“Forests managed [solely] by indigenous people are proven free from fires,” unlike tribal areas managed by corporations, he said.

Nevertheless, Nababan said the Paris agreement was a “very important first move” to save the world from a climate disaster.

On December 10, the Constitutional Court granted a petition allowing indigenous people to cultivate forests for their living.

However, activists claimed the verdict won’t have a significant impact on indigenous people.

“It’s only for those living within the forests, not for those surrounding the forests,” Andi Muttaqien, who helped prepare the court petition, told ucanews.com.

Muttaqien said the court’s ruling should also include surrounding areas where indigenous people commonly live.

He later recalled that at least 60 tribal people had been imprisoned since 2013 for destroying forest land.

“So far the government sees forests where indigenous people live as protected areas. As a result, those doing activities in such protected areas can be jailed,” he says.

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9523

As 190 nations grapple with the world’s future at the global climate summit in Paris, forest fires in Indonesia have been continuing to rage since July 2015.

Emissions from this year’s fires have reached 1.62 billion metric tons of CO2, bumping Indonesia up from sixth largest to fourth largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in the world, surpassing Russia in a matter of six weeks and the entire US economy in just 38 days. [1]

Global Forest Watch Fires detected at least 127,000 fires across Indonesia this year, the worst since 1997. These fires were mostly caused by the clearing of forested peat lands to plant palms for oil.

The fires have produced toxic smog smothering Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and as far away as Thailand and the Philippines. The haze closed schools, disabled airports and caused more than 500,000 cases of respiratory illnesses in South-East Asia. More than 40 million Indonesians have been affected.

In preparation for the Paris climate summit, 190 countries that are party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change were asked to submit their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to control carbon emissions. [2]

The UN has received 120 INDCs, which will be used to draft a new international climate agreement towards a “low-carbon and climate-resilient future”.

Eight of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have submitted their INDCs before the 1 October deadline. Only Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia have yet to make submissions.

Conditional target
Cambodia committed to reduce GHG emissions by 27 per cent by 2030, which will be taken from the energy, manufacturing and transport sectors, aside from other industries. But this target is “conditional” on international support. Cambodia also plans to increase its forest cover to 60 per cent of its land area by 2030.

Laos plans to increase its forest cover to 70 per cent of its total land area by the year 2020, with trees and forests serving as GHG sinks. The government also commits to increase the share of renewable energy to 30 per cent of its energy consumption by 2025.

Myanmar has the largest tropical forest area in mainland South-East Asia, so it is already a net GHG sink, its INDC said. But it will need international assistance in its socio-economic development.

The Philippines promised to reduce its carbon emissions by 70 per cent by the year 2030, which will be taken from the energy, transport, waste, forestry and industry sectors. But like Cambodia, the target is “conditional” on assistance from the international community.

Singapore, the first ASEAN country to submit its INDC, said it will unconditionally reduce emissions intensity by 36 per cent by 2030 in energy, industry, agriculture, land use, land-use change, forestry and waste.

Thailand, which is one of 16 countries considered most vulnerable to future climate change impacts in the next 30 years, placed adaptation as top priority and pledged to reduce its GHG emissions by 20 per cent by 2030.

Vietnam promises to unconditionally reduce its GHG emissions by 8 per cent by the year 2030, but the rate could reach 25 per cent with international support. Vietnam has intensified its efforts in forest protection, afforestation and reforestation.

For Indonesia, its INDC pledged to reduce deforestation and cut annual emissions by 29 percent by 2030 is unlikely to be met, however, if it does not put out the forest fires permanently.

Core issues
Observers note that the UN-sponsored climate talks start with countries submitting their INDCs to the planned climate change agreement. That these INDCs, focusing mainly on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, are “nationally determined” suggests that the agreement will have a strong bottom-up approach.

The summit will try to merge the INDCs with “top-down” elements to forge a compromise that assures broad participation and stronger direction. The task, however, will not be easy. Four core issues remain intractable. [3]

Differentiation – Developed countries do not want to have binding emissions targets for developed nations only, which they contend should be for all. Developing nations want the onus to be on the big emitters.

Finance – Developing countries want developed countries to make good on their commitment to mobilise US$100 billion a year in public and private finance by 2020 to establish a Green Climate Fund to finance mitigation and adaptation projects. Developed nations want to have more donor countries so the burden is not entirely on them.

Legal character ­– While the agreement will have “legal force”, there is no consensus on precisely what form it will take. While the United States, for example, is ready for binding procedural commitments, it opposes binding emission targets.

Transparency – Existing requirements for the reporting of country efforts are two-tiered, with a more rigorous system for developed countries than for developing ones. Developed countries are pushing for a common framework for all parties.

But there is hope that intractable positions in the past might change this time around, in view of undeniable evidence that global warming and climate change are here.

The United States and China have announced that both want a deal. The European Union also has set its target, which accounts for more than half of the world’s emissions. India has begun devoting more attention to climate change.

If only Indonesia can put out its fires and two big Asian economies, Japan and Korea, join the bandwagon, and political will strengthens among the big economies, Paris 2015 could be a landmark for the struggle to mitigate global warming and climate change.

Crispin Maslog is a former journalist and now science journalism professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and director of the Silliman School of Journalism, Philippines. He is a consultant of the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication and board chairperson of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, both based in Manila. This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s South-East Asia & Pacific desk.

References
[1] Nancy Harris et al. With latest fires crisis, Indonesia surpasses Russia as world’s fourth-largest emitter (World Resources Institute, 29 October 2015)
[2] Center for Climate and Energy Solutions Submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) (Accessed 14 November 2015)
[3] Elliot Diringer The core issues in the Paris climate talks (Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, 2 November 2015)

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9508

Report by Ryan Dagur in Jakarta

While countries consider their climate change options for the future at COP21 in Paris, forest fires and the ensuing pollution have been growing problems in Indonesia.

For the most part, the scorched forest issue was isolated to the western Indonesian islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra. However, this year, the issue has plagued both Papua and West Papua, which raises concern among activists about the future of forests in these easternmost provinces.

“If it is not seen as a serious threat. It is a scourge for the future,” said Franciscan seminarian Yulianus Freddy Pawika of the Francisan commission for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation in Papua.

According to the National Agency for Disaster Management, from July to October this year, fires struck 2.6 million hectares of forest.

Papua, which had 353,191 hectares of land burned, stands behind Sumatra (832,999) and Kalimantan (806,817).

The number of fire hotspots in Papua, according to Purbo Sutopo Nugroho, the agency spokesman, reached 584, with the majority in Merauke district, which had 346, while Mappi district had 117.

Fire triggers
Nugroho said forest fires are a new problem for Papua.

The government, meanwhile, placed the blame for the fires on indigenous people.

“If the forests are burned and rain falls after that, grass will grow back and become green and animals will come. It will become a hunting ground for nomadic groups. These aspects are being investigated by us,” Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar told The Jakarta Post.

However, activists like Pawika believe the fires are triggered by the activities of multinational corporations, which have increased their presence in Papua over the past decade.

In Merauke, a fire hotspot, the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate megaproject converted about 1.6 million hectares of land used by indigenous Malind people into a food, timber and biofuel production plantation.

The project was initially announced in 2009 by former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, with the goal of helping the country raise production of crops like rice, corn and soybean.

In May, President Joko Widodo announced plans to relaunch the project and said that the allocated area would be expanded to 4.6 million hectares.

According to Pusaka, a nongovernmental organisation focusing on indigenous rights, the government so far has granted permits to 41 plantation companies to operate on 1.5 million hectares of land.

Pusaka spokesman Yosafat Leonard Franky said three companies were responsible for the fires.

“We do not believe the Papuans are the perpetrators of forest fires,” he said.

“We are more inclined to think that there are other parties who deliberately set fire to the forest, because perhaps in the future they need land for oil palm plantations and other agriculture.”

According to Franky, culturally, Papuans never burn their forests, preferring instead to preserve the land.

“In general, if Papuans want to open new fields, they use machetes and axes to chop wood. If it is said that people burn forests to clear land and then hunt animals, that is not at all in accordance with their traditions,” he said.

Pawika said that in the Papuan mindset, the forest is their friend.

“So it is impossible that the perpetrators of forest fires are indigenous Papuans.”

Nugroho, the disaster agency spokesman, said he would not rule out corporations’ culpability. However, he said the effects of the El Nino phenomenon, which have wreaked havoc on developing countries dependent on agriculture, is the principal cause of the prolonged drought that has left the region vulnerable to forest fires.

Local concerns
Attention to this issue is already emerging, especially from local governments.

Lamadi de Lamato, spokesman for Papua Governor Lukas Enembe, said that in addition to taking steps to extinguish the fires, the government has urged all parties, including companies, to not set forests on fire.

The plantation corporations maintain that they are not responsible for the forest fires; placing the blame on the prolonged drought leading to arid conditions. Indeed even de Lamato said the corporations’ involvement in the fires would be difficult to prove, given the worsening drought.

Meanwhile, Franky said he hopes the local government will remain consistent in its attempts to preserve the forests, noting that many government officials are more concerned with short-term profits rather than preserving forests for long-term benefit.

Zenzi Suhadi, forest protection campaigner for the Indonesian forum for the environment, said the government must control the activities of corporations working in the region. He accused government officials of passing out concessions too easily to various companies.

From 2007-2011 for example, he said 14.7 million hectares of land were awarded to plantation companies.

“The granting of licenses should be tightened and law enforcement must be carried out on those negligent of their duties,” he said.

Weak church
Pawika lamented the weak role of the church in speaking out forcefully on the destruction of Papua’s forests, in comparison to the corporations who are backed by security forces that suppress resistance from local people.

“Concern over this issue is still limited in certain circles. It has not been a concern for the five dioceses in Papua,” Pawika said.

“We have not heard of one bishop in Papua speak firmly about this issue,” said Pawika, a Papua native.

He said the church must unite against forest destruction, given that this is a major threat to the indigenous Papuans’ survival.

“The indigenous people depend on the forest. If this problem is not solved soon, then this also means Papuans will be increasingly marginalised,” he said.

Report by the UCA Catholic News Service.

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9499