Opening up Palm Oil Plantations

The Indonesian Ministry of Forestry said on Monday that in order to meet its ambitious emission reduction targets it plans to issue a new regulation that will allow commercial forestry companies to plant palm oil crops in new concession areas.

This mixed forest regulation is intended by the Ministry to help those companies survive the low timber prices at present and enable them to grow biofuel to alleviate the country’s current energy shortage.

As expected environmental groups are angered and dismayed at this news as they warn that the plan would accelerate deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

In its defence Hadi Daryanto, general director of forest protection at the ministry, said that the regulation would be issued soon but would only apply to forestry concessions granted after it took effect.

Currently the Indonesian government holds 44.3 million hectares of forest with a further 36.8 million hectares of commercial forest. The new regulation would stipulate that a minimum of 49% of forestry concessions would be used for planting commercial forests and up to 21% could be used to plant crops. The left over 30% would be set aside for conservation and for the use of local communities.

This isn’t the first time this plan has been thought up. In 1999 a similar regulation was issued and then swiftly withdrawn after the majority of forestry companies used the land to plant more commercial forests than permitted. Due to the ministry’s advanced monitoring system Hadi is optimistic that the companies will adhere to the rules this time around.

Elfian Effendi, the executive director of Greenomics Indonesia, disagrees and said that the group strongly opposes bringing back the failed regulation.
“The ministry will repeat the failure, since forestry companies will prefer to plant palm oil because it’s more profitable than planting commercial forests,” Elfian said.

Elfian went on to stress that even without the regulation most forestry companies had illegally planted palm oil plantations.