Indonesia makes agreements to put deforestation in perspective
Two days after several states reached an agreement to stop deforestation by 2030, the Indonesian government relativized the scope of the agreement. Indonesia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mahendra Sieger said it was “wrong and misleading” to describe the agreement as an agreement to completely stop deforestation. The country’s environment minister, City Nurbaya Bakar, said it was “clearly unreasonable and unfair” to “force” Indonesia to completely deforestation by 2030.
The Declaration on Better Conservation of Forests was signed on Tuesday at the World Climate Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. More than a hundred countries, including Indonesia, signed the declaration. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the host of COP26, described the deal as fundamental to achieving the 1.5 degree target.
Indonesia’s Environment Minister Bakar said there are different definitions of deforestation. Climate protection agreements are also unlikely to have a negative impact on economic growth. He stressed that Indonesia’s “large-scale development” under President Joko Widodo “should not be stopped in the name of CO2 emissions or deforestation”.
In Tuesday’s statement, representatives from more than a hundred countries pledged to “work together to prevent and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while promoting sustainable development and inclusive rural transformation.”
A UK government spokesman said they saw no contradiction between the wording of the statement and those made by Indonesian officials. “My understanding is that the Indonesian government has stated that it should be able to continue legal harvesting and farming to support economic growth,” the spokesman said. This is in line with Tuesday’s statement. “Federal states are committed to ending net deforestation and ensuring that any forest loss is permanently compensated.”
According to the Global Forest Watch organization, Indonesia still had 93.8 million hectares of primary forest area in 2001 – an area roughly the size of Egypt. By 2020 the sector had shrunk by about ten percent. It is true that deforestation in Indonesia has decreased since 2015. As before, the forest area in the country is decreasing year after year. (AFP)