The pressure for the Indonesian government to actively take part in climate change mitigation has been escalated lately. Since 2016, Indonesia has been a part of the Paris Agreement to join the global movement to tackle climate change and its negative impacts. First adopted at COP 21, the agreement demands committed countries to submit an updated national climate action plan, called Nationally Determined Contribution or NDC, on a five-year cycle. Hence, COP 26, which was held a couple of weeks ago in Glasgow, was the centre of attention to all activists and environmentalists to find out how each country’s progress has been mitigating climate issues for the past five years. President Jokowi spoke at COP 26 about Indonesia’s achievements in mitigating climate change which many Indonesian activists and environmentalists then criticized. He mentioned that Indonesia has been positively contributing to tackling climate change and that the deforestation rate in Indonesia has significantly reduced. Greenpeace criticized that all the Jokowi’s claims were not picturing the whole situation to Indonesia’s current condition. Greenpeace believed that the low rate of deforestation was not a product of policy intervention but merely from the wet season.
Just a day after COP 26 conference, the tweets from Siti Nurbaya, the Minister of Environment and Forestry, added fuel to the fire. She wrote a Twitter thread, explaining the vast development in Jokowi’s era should not be stopped only because of carbon emissions or deforestation. She also put the dilemma of the Indonesian government in achieving the net-zero carbon goal by 2030. “If the concept is no deforestation, that means there will be no roads, then how about the people, do they have to be isolated? Meanwhile the government must be present in the middle of its people”. The statement she put in her tweets was considered pro-deforestation, which contradicts her duty to contribute to Indonesia’s commitment to Net-Zero by 2060. It instantly got viral on social media. Aside from the controversy, the 2015 – 2019 National Medium Term Development Plan (RPJMN) mentioned six main national development goals: leading sector development targets, including food and energy. With monoculture food production and fossil fuel-based energy production, deforestation is inevitable, and Minister Siti’s controversial statement makes more sense and reflects the dilemma on forest management in Indonesia.
However, the urgency to create a global movement tackling climate change is because climate change is getting real. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global temperature was 1.1 degrees Celcius above the pre-industrial period in 2019. In addition to that, the total greenhouse gas emissions, including land-use change, reached 59.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. It is undeniable that Indonesia also significantly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. The Global Forest Watch summarized the tree cover loss that has been happening in Indonesia for the past ten years. For the last two decades, Indonesia lost 27.7 million hectares of tree cover and equivalent to 19 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. An article from WRI Indonesia mentioned that even though the overall deforestation rate is declining from 2015 to 2018, several provinces with an abundance of primary forest and peatland, which are East Kalimantan, Maluku, and West Papua, experienced a 43%, 40%, and 35% increase in deforestation, respectively. The impact of climate change affects the environmental and social aspects and dramatically affects the economy. In the 4th Indonesia Circular Economic Forum, the National Development Planning Agency of Indonesia or Bappenas mentioned that the economic loss due to climate change will reach 115 trillion rupiah in 2024. However, Indonesia can reduce the loss to 57 trillion rupiahs by making some efforts on mitigating climate change, Bappenas said.
The dilemma then brings up the question: how should the Indonesian government act on climate change mitigation in a way that is not threatening the continuity of national development but not stunting the growth of economic development? In 2004, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry issued an ecosystem restoration concession (ERC) regulation in the production forest area. ERC is a forest-based management model that allows the private sector to restore degraded lands and utilize non-timber products and environmental services in the production forest area. The idea behind ERC is to provide a license to investors, similar to logging and industrial forest permit, to reforest the area that the other two permit’s activities have impacted. ERC could help carbon capture scale and offset the carbon footprint from development activities if it runs well. And since private firms manage ERC, it could also positively impact the economy. Unlike NGO or non-profit organizations, the ERC scheme demands the operating company to profit through ecosystem restoration. It can be from utilizing non-timber products such as honey, bamboo, or rattan, cultivating medicinal plants, wildlife preservation, developing ecotourism, and carbon capture and sequestration.
Even though ERC is a relatively new concept and not as appealing and popular as other types of concession, some ERC companies managed to show some progress that supports Indonesia’s development plan and climate mitigation targets. The ERC of PT Rimba Makmur Utama (RMU), also known as the Katingan-Mentaya Project, focuses on carbon business to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and has sold its carbon credits to companies such as Shell, Volkswagen, and NP Paribas. By protecting and restoring the forest, RMU had Verified Carbon Units for about 4.34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2017. A member of the APRIL group, PT Restorasi Ekosistem Riau (RER), also committed to protecting, restoring, and conserving the forest ecosystem through ERC. RER has been inventing flora and fauna, preventing forest fires, and conducting ecosystem research in its concession of 150.693 ha forest in Riau province. RER embodies APRIL’s commitment to conserving one hectare of land for every one hectare of APRIL’s pulp and paper plantation. PT Restorasi Ekosistem Indonesia (REKI), the first ERC license holder, has become a home to 1.350 species, improving local livelihood by protecting farmers’ right to land, promoting women’s rights, and preserving deforestation-free areas through its Hutan Harapan. And PT Restorasi Habitat Orangutan Indonesia (RHOI) has provided a secure habitat for more than 400 orangutans from BOS Foundation Orangutan Reintroduction program.
ERC business models typically include carbon sequestration, wildlife conservation, forest protection, utilizing non-timber forest product (NTFS), developing ecotourism, enhancing local economies, and research and development. These activities potentially support the national development plan in practice and in a strategic way. Five of the 7 Agenda in The National Medium Term Development Plan 2020-2024, which are strengthening economic resilience, reducing inequality from regional development, improving human resources, building national character and culture, and enhancing the natural environment and building climate and disaster resilience, could use ecosystem restoration concession as a strategy to achieve the sustainable development goals. Moreover, the implementation of Omnibus law can benefit investors in doing ecosystem restoration business. The current regulation issued by the Minister of Environment and Forestry, P.8/2021, allow multibusiness activities in production forest with only one permit, called PBPH. With PBPH, investors can be more flexible in choosing where to invest in ecosystem restoration. Moreover, the G20 presidency of Indonesia 2022 also forces president Jokowi to show off his capability and willingness in moving toward sustainable development. Promoting ERC and putting best practices into practice, ecosystem restoration can be the most strategic way to solve the dilemma between climate change and development.
By Sari Fitriani / moderndiplomacy
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of AsiaWE Review.
