May 21, 2012
The Forestry Ministry says that women can play a major role in forest conservation efforts as they are now equipped with required skills.
The minister’s special staff Indriastuti said that with adequate training, women who lived in the conservation areas could live prosperously without having to go too far into the forest to make a living.
“There are at least 558 non-wood forest commodities that can be developed by women, such as silk, honey, bamboo...
May 20, 2012
Tropical peatlands are widely distributed throughout Indonesia, Malaysia and several other countries in South East Asia. They play an important role in stabilizing the ecosystem, particularly in regulating drainage, microclimate, and water quality and soil formation. In Vietnam, approximately 183,000 ha of peat swamps can be found, mainly located in the Lower Mekong Basin. There are two main areas of where peat remains: in Kien Giang and Ca Mau provinces. The peatland area found within U...
The underlying principle of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) is based on contractual payments to users of a natural resource, such payments being subject to the condition that PES maintain a pre-defined environmental service.
They can be viewed as a way for private stakeholders to bypass public policies by contracting outside the policy framework, as long as the instrument is viewed as an application of the Coase theorem. For instance, some PES enable local...
May 18, 2012
Opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions exist across all sectors of the economy and across a wide geographic area, but emissions from forest and peatland conversion dominate the field, as well as the public debate. With the advent of REDD+, the introduction of an Indonesian action plan for emissions reduction under the remit of the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA), and the potential for increased financial flows into carbon-rich landscapes, the question of how to...
An Indonesian oil palm plantation in which Norway has a financial stake paid Papuan tribal landowners as little as US$0.65 per hectare for their forestland, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) can reveal.
In the new report Clear-Cut Exploitation, EIA and its Indonesian partner Telapak expose woefully low payments by PT Henrison Inti Persada (PT HIP) to marginalised Moi tribe clans for land and timber. Evidence includes a copy of PT HIPs ‘contract’ with a Moi...
In a forest not far from the capital, local residents are stepping up to help protect the earth in an initiative that may give the next generation hope for the future. The people of Cipeuteuy village in Sukabumi, West Java, realized the weight on their shoulders was getting heavier and heavier after living side by side with a newly established national park. Not only had they lost a source of income – for the park prohibited them from obtaining anything from that protected land – but they...
Land Use Planning for Low Emission Development Strategy (LUWES) is a framework that helps local stakeholders to design a development planning that can reduce green house gas emission from land-based activity while still maintained economic growth. This offers a set of principles, steps and tools (including a Java-based software, ABACUS SP) to help multi-stakeholders to negotiate the land use plans by entertaining scenarios that can be developed together.
Please...
May 17, 2012
The fast rate of deforestation in East Kalimantan over the last few years has made it the country’s third largest carbon emitting region. According to the East Kalimantan Climate Change Council (DDPI), the province emitted 255 million tons of carbon dioxide last year, behind only Riau (358 million tons) and Central Kalimantan (324 million tons).
Daddy Ruchiyat, chairman of the DPPI, said that just five years ago the province was the bedrock of the country’s natural...
May 16, 2012
Regulations and structures to handle Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation+ (REDD) programmes, as well as building linkages with local communites and utilising local knowledge may be the key to the transboundary haze situation.
The 2nd Ministerial Steering Committee (MSC) Forum on Transboundary Haze last week decided that there is a need for regulations and incentives to be put in place by governments in order to induce the market to...
Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) Group, the world’s second-largest pulp and paper producer, launched on Tuesday its new policies on high conservation value forests (HCVF), which include the suspension of natural forest clearance while it conducts further assessments starting from next month.
The suspension would cover more than 50 percent of the concessions owned by APP, a total area of 1.08 million hectares, managing director of sustainability and stakeholder engagement Aida...