SBY Signs Decree on 2-Year Deforestation Moratorium

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has finally signed a two-year moratorium on the conversion into logging concessions of almost half of the total forest cover in Indonesia.

The moratorium is part of a bilateral agreement with Norway in which Indonesia will receive $1 billion to launch activities under the United Nations-backed Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD Plus) program.

Agus Purnomo, a presidential adviser on climate change, said the moratorium applied to all peatlands and primary forests that had not been reserved for any purpose and for which no permits had been issued.

Agus said 64 million hectares of Indonesia’s 130 million hectares of total forest cover was protected by the moratorium, which took effect after Yudhoyono signed the decree on Thursday.

The adviser said that although existing laws already protected primary forests, the decree was needed to reinforce anti-logging measures.

“This is to make [the law] stronger. Primary forests, if touched, will mean violating the decree and there will be legal consequences,” Agus said.

The moratorium had originally been expected to take effect on Jan. 1, but it was delayed pending the decree’s signing.

The plan received a push from Norway, which sent a letter to the national government saying peatland and primary forests should not be logged.

However, Agus said logging could still continue in secondary forests, those regrown after being damaged by fires or logging.

Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta said in March that even before a decree was signed, a moratorium had already been in place.

“We’ve banned the clearing of peatland and primary forests since the start of the year,” Gusti said. “We’ve already stopped issuing permits. The decree is only to provide legal certainty.”

Elfian Effendi, executive director of Greenomics, a forestry advocacy group, welcomed Yudhoyono’s decision.

“At this stage, we need to look at the political attitude of the president, who has given attention to forestry issues, even though the substance of the decree may not be perfect,” he said.

“We have to admit that not all leaders of country would want to take that step.”

Bustar Maitar, the head of Greenpeace’s forests campaign, also welcomed the decree, but he said the state should prove it can fully enforce the ban.

“We expect a meaningful moratorium which will protect Indonesian forests,” Bustar said on Thursday. “This should include the protection of all remaining natural forests, full protection of peatlands and a review of existing concession permit


( x the KG))

(I suppose it is a start, but now watch for those clever dickies to find the loop holes so they will still continue felling the trees!) siK

Forest Moratorium Excludes Permit Extensions, Energy Projects.

Indonesia's two-year moratorium on new permits to clear primary forests and carbon-rich peatlands will exclude the extension of existing permits and permits already given in principle by the Forestry Ministry, an official said on Friday.

It will also exclude projects to develop energy such as geothermal, gas and power plants, as well as plantations for rice and sugar, the official told a news conference.

The moratorium, delayed by five months from a planned January start, was signed into law on Thursday in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation under a $1 billion climate deal with Norway.

It ordered a freeze on new permits to log or convert 64 million hectares of primary forests and peatlands.

"I appealed to the government that non-forest areas should not be included in the moratorium," said Joko Supriyono, secretary general at the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki).

"The impact of the moratorium, even though they postponed the signing, was uncertainty," he told Reuters.

He said this uncertainty had led to expansion in 2010 of 300,000 hectares of palm oil plantations in the world's top palm oil producing nation, reduced from a minimum 500,000 hectares in recent years.

Reuters



( Did I say something about loop-holes?) siK.

Activists Cry Foul as 35% of Forests Avoid Permits Freeze


Sighs of relief from activists on Thursday that a long-awaited two-year moratorium on forest clearance permits had finally been signed were drowned out on Friday after it emerged that more than a third of Indonesia’s forest area will not be covered.

“The announcement is a far cry from the commitment made by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono related to forest protection and leads to big questions on its implementation,” said Bustar Maitar, a Greenpeace forest campaigner.

A presidential adviser on climate change on Thursday said that Yudhoyono had finally signed the two-year moratorium that had been scheduled to have come into effect in January. But after details of the moratorium were released at a news conference on Friday, discontent was on the rise.

Bustar voiced anger that the moratorium only covered primary forests and peatland, which were already protected by the law. “[There are] still millions of hectares of Indonesia’s forests that will be destroyed,” he said.

A map attached to the moratorium documents shows that 64.2 million hectares of primary forest and 31.9 million hectares of peatland were covered, but not 36.6 million hectares of secondary forest. Primary forest is untouched by agriculture or industry, secondary forest is part of areas that have been partially cleared for agricultural or industrial use.

“Greenpeace has estimated that 104.8 million hectares of forest should be included in the moratorium,” Bustar added.

Giorgio Budi Indrarto, program manager for forest and climate at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, said the moratorium was inadequate. “The primary forests in Indonesia are declining, but the total area [covered by them] is open to question. [Areas] called primary forest include the national parks. So, what’s the use of the permit moratorium if it only covers primary forests [as these are mostly protected already]?” he said.

The 1999 Forestry Law, Giorgio said, did not contain any reference to primary forest and instead used the terms protected forest, conservation forest and production forest to describe areas where varying degrees of human activity were allowed.

“How is it that something that did not [legally] exist suddenly becomes recognized?” he said, noting that the government was not consistent in its use of legal terms.

Teguh Surya, head of climate justice at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said the term had no prior legal basis. “It is only a technical definition which is only used to define the levels of forest degradation and should not be put into context of policy or issuing permits,” Teguh said.

He also said the moratorium should not have been issued in the form of a presidential instruction [Inpres].

“A presidential instruction is only the president’s instruction to individual government officials” and therefore lacks the authority of, for instance, a full-blown law, he said.

Giorgio said there was also the problem of companies eying underground mining concessions in protected forests that already received a “permit in principle” from the Forestry Ministry and would thus not be covered by the moratorium. He pointed out these were not actual permits, suggesting there should be a possibility to not grant such companies permission to advance.

“In the past, a decision approved ‘in principle’ could always be changed,” Giorgio said.

He also said that the moratorium contained no instruction to law enforcers, “as if all the complexity of forest issues in the country can be solved by administrative means only.”

( x the JG)