Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mr Jens Stoltenberg
Prime Minister of Norway
P.B. 8001 Dep
0030 Oslo
November 18th 2010
Your Excellencies,
As scientists who study tropical forest ecosystems, we would like to commend the Indonesian
government for its commitment to tackling deforestation as well as the Norwegian government for
the support it is providing to help Indonesia achieve this.
We would like to emphasize how important it is that both governments ensure the agreement
currently under discussion not only ensures a reduction in green-house gas emissions, but also
supports the conservation of Indonesia’s rich and diverse forest ecosystems, which provide
livelihoods for millions of people and sustain biodiversity. For decades, some of the world’s most
charismatic wildlife, including orangutans, tigers, Asian elephants and rhinos, clouded leopards, and
countless other endemic and rare species, have experienced extreme pressure as their forest
habitats have disappeared.
A moratorium on the granting of new concession licenses for plantations on natural forest and
peatland areas for two years provides a strong starting point to help with such protection, but only if
the right safeguards are established from the beginning.
One crucial issue that we feel compelled to raise surrounds the need for protection to include logged
forests of high conservation value in addition to unlogged or ‘primary forests’. Certainly, all
remaining primary forests must be protected, but any tract of forest should be assessed for its
current and potential future conservation value.
This matters because whilst the original ‘Letter of Intent’ between Indonesia and Norway stated that
‘natural forests’ would be protected, recent press reports suggest that only ‘primary forests’ will be
protected (see also Reuters).
Government officials have been reported to state that plantation expansion will still be possible
because “degraded land and forest” could still be licensed for agricultural use. Indeed, last month
the Indonesian forestry minister told the Jakarta Post that “idle forest areas other than primary
forests and peatlands” would be available for cultivation. We note with concern that there is still no
official Government definition of what constitutes ‘degraded’.
When analysed together, these statements suggest that the Indonesian government may be
adopting a position that would rightly protect primary forest but could then by default define all other
‘non-primary’ forest as ‘degraded’ and as such potentially earmark it for clearance.
This is deeply concerning. In our scientific view, habitats being considered ‘degraded forests’,
including disturbed, logged, secondary, and other natural forest types, can be tremendously
important for the protection of biodiversity and forest dwelling peoples, as well as for combating
global climate change. Recent academic papers have highlighted this exact point, as did an
important resolution passed at last week’s Round Table on Sustainable Palm-Oil General Assembly:
On orangutans, Ancrenaz et al recently stated: “Our surveys show that orangutan populations can
be maintained in lightly and sustainably logged forests but decline and are eventually driven to
localised extinction in forests that are heavily logged or subjected to fast, successive coupes
following conventional extraction methods.”
On Sumatran tigers, Maddox et al stated “even the most degraded habitats had significant
conservation value; the heavily logged and cleared areas within the oil palm concession contained
90% of the species in the wider landscape including a healthy population of Sumatran tigers.” It
must be stressed, though, that monoculture plantations alone sustain very little biodiversity
compared with natural forests, even degraded ones.
On Carbon, Berry et al stated “We conclude that allowing the continued regeneration of extensive
areas of Borneo’s forest that have already been logged, and are at risk of conversion to other land
uses, would provide a significant carbon store that is likely to increase over time. Protecting intact
forest is critical for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, but the contribution of
logged forest to these twin goals should not be overlooked.”
And more generally, the richest biodiversity in Indonesian rainforests occurs in lowland forests.
Conserving this biodiversity requires large, landscape-scale forest areas that in many cases are
comprised of selectively-logged or otherwise lightly-degraded forest contiguous with primary forest.
Scientific protocols to delineate these critical lowland forests of high conservation value have been
endorsed and implemented by diverse stakeholders in Indonesia, and could help advise your forest
classification.
With this perspective in mind, we call on the Indonesian and Norwegian governments to recognise
and reflect in their forest protection agreements that natural forests, even when not in their primary
state, may have high conservation value and are still important for the long-term protection of
Indonesia’s biodiversity and its forest dependent peoples, as well as for combating global climate
change. Indeed, as world attention turns to Cancun, Mexico for the forthcoming UN climate talks,
Indonesia is well placed to set a good example for similar schemes all round the tropical forest belt,
on which the future of our global climate stability depends.
Yours sincerely,