Incentives urged to stop deforestation

Incentives urged to stop deforestation

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Environmentalists and foresters suggested on Thursday that more
incentives be offered to countries that have vast areas of
tropical forests, such as Indonesia, and to timber companies,
which all play roles in preventing further deforestation.

Forests and livelihood program officer of the Bogor-based
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Hari Priyadi
said that the lack of incentives has made timber companies in
Indonesia reluctant to implement "reduced impact logging (RIL)".

RIL is a collection of forest harvesting techniques which
results in low levels of damage to the stock of residual trees,
soil and water.

"The Ministry of Forestry has issued a regulation in 2001 that
all companies in Indonesia must implement RIL in their
concession, but such a move isn't effective because the
government doesn't offer any incentives to the firms," he told a
workshop on Thursday at the Asia Europe Environment Forum in
Jakarta.

The three-day forum, which began on Wednesday, features 12
workshops to discuss various environmental issues and is being
attended by around 300 environmentalists from 38 countries in
Asia and Europe.

Another CIFOR activist, Herry Purnomo, proposed that countries
and companies, which have been carrying out sustainable tropical
forest management should also be compensated under the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM).

"Carbon trading should provide attractive incentives to grow
trees," he said.

CDM is one of the mechanisms regulated under the Kyoto
Protocol to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It requires
developed countries to reduce their gas emissions by 5.2 percent
from 2008 to 2012, and to finance projects in developing
countries that can reduce gas emissions.

Under the scheme, the trade of per ton carbon dioxide
equivalent (tCO2) is worth between US$3 and $6 in the
international market.

According to Indonesia's National Commission of CDM, the
country has a potential to reduce up to 300 million tCO2, which
is equal to about $1.65 billion.

A forester for the Austrian-based International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis, Florian T. Kraxner, said NGOs and
environmentalists were now lobbying for the inclusion of
certified forest management as a verification tool for CDM
projects.

"Such certification now merely functions as a market
tool ...We are now lobbying that it will also be used as a
verification system in the Kyoto Protocol for the 2008-2012
commitment period," he told The Jakarta Post.

Kraxner also said that market punishment was more effective to
encourage timber firms to implement sustainable forest
management.

"One possible incentive is to implement a procurement policy
in big (wood products) buyer countries, such as the European
Union countries and Japan. The policy, which is now being
discussed in those countries, will require that the government or
the public should only procure certified timber products," he
said.