Opinion by Dr. Daniel Muridyarso, CIFOR Senior Scientist
Deforestation and land clearance in developing countries are responsible for annual carbon emissions of approximately 1,600 megatons. That’s roughly a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, making deforestation a major cause of global warming. Unfortunately, the Kyoto Protocol, in its current form, fails to include measures to combat deforestation as part of the armoury to reduce carbon emissions. This is likely to change.
Two years ago, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) launched discussions on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, or REDD. Shortly afterwards, the influential Stern Review, an analysis of the economics of climate change published by the UK Government, argued that ‘avoided deforestation’ should be an important element in any future international agreement. The decision about precisely how this might work - in other words, what sort of incentive schemes might encourage developing countries to reduce deforestation - will be made when the Conference of Parties meets in Bali, in December 2007.
At present, the world tropical forest estate covers some 13 billion hectares, and this is being reduced by around 12 million hectares - almost one per cent - each year. The loss in Indonesia alone amounts to almost 2 million hectares. But the scale of the problem in Indonesia is worse than these figures imply.
A report published in 2006 - ‘PEAT-C02’ - looked at the impact of forest conversion on peatlands in South East Asia. Of the 27 million hectares of peatlands, 12 million have been deforested and most of this has been drained. Each year, peatland fires release 1,400 megatons of C02, and total emissions from peatlands amount to around 2,000 megatons - or 8 per cent of fossil fuel emissions. Ninety per cent of peatland emissions come from Indonesia, making it the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions after the United States and China.
Many of us working in this field are embarrassed that Indonesia - which is not categorised as an industrialized country under that Kyoto Protocol - is such a serious climate polluter. One could quibble about some of the figures in the PEAT-C02 report, but its findings should stimulate us into changing the way we manage our tropical forests.
There is, after all, a silver lining to these dirty clouds. In any future REDD negotiations, Indonesia should be able to use its past emissions as a reference point for future reductions. If it could control peat forest fires, then the reductions could be immense, and Indonesia would have “hot-air” to sell, for example, to countries buying carbon credits to offset their own industrial emissions.
A similar situation prevailed in Russia when the Kyoto Protocol first came into force. Russia’s quota for reducing emissions was 17 per cent of the global target, second only to the United States. During the following years, the country experienced an economic crisis and its emissions reduced dramatically, by default rather than design. As a result, Russia found itself with plenty of “hot air” to sell under the Kyoto Protocol’s Joint Implementation and Emission Trading schemes within Annex I countries.
Indonesia clearly has something to sell in any future REDD agreements, but to do so it will need to take a number of measures. For one thing, it needs to improve its ability to draw up inventories of forests and carbon stocks. It will also need to improve forest governance and dramatically decrease land-use conflict while recognizing property rights. Indonesia could lead other countries by establishing pilot projects to reduce deforestation, without waiting for the new Kyoto Protocol to come into force. Indeed, the next five years could be used as a training session to evaluate best and worst practice.
Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso is a Senior Scientist with CIFOR’s Environmental Services and Sustainable Use of Forests Programme. He is a former Deputy Minister of Environment for Natural Resources Management Policy Formulation with the Government of Indonesia.