Palm | Kelapa Sawit

Tunggadewa Mattangkilang Jakarta Globe 12 Feb 13;

Malinau, East Kalimantan. The Malinau district administration has acknowledged that it will take some time before the economic benefits emerge from a carbon sequestration project that begun there two years ago.

Apriansyah, the head of conservation at the district forestry office, said on Monday that the process of accounting for and trading the carbon sequestered in the Kayan Mentarang National Park was lengthy and very complex.

The administration is working with the German government on a reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) scheme involving 15 villages on the periphery of the park.

“The essence of the project is to empower the local communities so that they are no longer dependent on the forest for their livelihoods, which will prevent deforestation,” Apriansyah said.

“This project will then open the door to the prospect of carbon trading.”

The REDD scheme at Kayan Mentarang is aimed at sequestering 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide over a five-year period.

Apriansyah said that while the payments from selling the carbon would only come several years down the line, local communities were already benefiting from training programs aimed at improving their environmental awareness and stewardship of the forest.

However, environmental groups have criticized the effectiveness of the planned carbon trading scheme in helping slow overall global carbon emissions.

Fathur Roziqin, the deputy director of the East Kalimantan chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said that developing countries like Indonesia with abundant forests stood to benefit very little from the scheme.

“Carbon trading isn’t the best way to tackle the problem of global warming because it encourages the privatization of state forests, which in the long term leads to the marginalization of forest communities,” he said.

He also said it would be difficult to monitor the management of forests used as carbon sinks in the trading scheme, given the inherent lack of transparency in the forestry sector.

Fathur added that it was unfair to prevent the around 5,000 residents practicing subsistence forestry around Kayan Mentarang from making a living simply to offset the emissions of companies and consumers in wealthier countries.