There are 260 posts filed in Indonesia (this is page 1 of 18).
Harold Tjiptadjaja is Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer of Indonesia Infrastructure Finance, an institution created by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and Indonesia’s Ministry of Finance. IIF funds oil and gas projects, airports, toll roads, seaports, and power generation, among other things.
This week Eco-Business reported Tjiptadjaja as saying that “Deforestation poses a bigger problem for the climate than burning coal in Indonesia”.
On 30 May 2018, REDD-Monitor wrote a post based on a paper in the current issue of the journal Conservation and Society. The paper is titled, “Slippery Violence in the REDD+ Forests of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia”, and is written by Peter Howson.
Indonesia contributes more greenhouse gases from forest destruction and degradation than any other country. The solution, trumpeted since 2007 at the UN climate meeting in Bali, is supposed to be REDD.
Last week, the third meeting of the Partners of the Global Peatlands Initiative took place in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. After the meeting, the United Nations Environment Programme, one of the organisers and funder of the meeting, put out a press release announcing that a “historic agreement” had been signed “to protect the world’s largest tropical peatland”.
The Indonesian government talks a good talk on climate change, particularly relating to reducing deforestation. But does it walk the walk? Unfortunately, the reality falls far short of the rhetoric.
Dorjee Sun is the CEO of Carbon Conservation, a company set up 10 years ago to run REDD projects. The company’s first REDD project was the Ulu Masen REDD project, in Aceh province on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Sun partnered with Aceh’s “green governor”, Yusuf Irwandi, and Flora and Fauna International, to run the carbon trading project.
In 2007, the Forest Peoples Programme put out a briefing paper about reduced emissions from deforestation, or RED, as REDD was called back then. The briefing warned of the risks of the rapid expansion of avoided deforestation schemes without due regard to rights, and social and livelihood issues.
Last week, Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The Governor of California, Jerry Brown reacted swiftly on a press call organised by the World Resources Institute. Brown called Trump’s decision “tragic”, “wrong”, “misguided”, “insane”, and “deviant behaviour”.
On 15 May 2017, the Washington-based NGO Mighty Earth submitted a complaint to FSC about the Korindo Group’s destructive activities.
Yesterday, the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Financial Corporation launched a US$152 million bond aimed at supporting REDD and carbon trading. The deal demonstrates just about everything that’s wrong with REDD.
Last year, local elections took place in Indonesia. The vote for the governor of Central Kalimantan was delayed, and took place in January 2016. Sugianto Sabran, the candidate with the closest ties to the palm oil industry won – by a very narrow margin.
A few weeks ago, REDD-Monitor took a look at how the Asian Development Bank appears to have changed its tune on REDD. In 2010, the ADB was promoting the region’s “huge potential to benefit from REDD+”, but by 2015 the ADB acknowledged the “considerable uncertainty about the actual contribution that REDD will make”.
On 5 February 2013, Asia Pulp and Paper announced a Forest Conservation Policy. This included an immediate stop to clearing forest in any concessions controlled by APP and its suppliers. It was a dramatic change in policy for a company that is responsible for destroying vast areas of forest in Indonesia.
On 31 December 2015, Accreditation Services International terminated SGS Malaysia’s accreditation with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. REDD-Monitor wrote about this in February 2016: “Transparency and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil: Why was SGS Malaysia’s accreditation terminated?” Neither RSPO nor ASI were willing to explain why SGS Malaysia’s accreditation had been terminated.
