Future At present there are approximately 8,641 km2
of forest left
where orangutans occur. Te vast majority of this area consists of forest on non-peat land (7,760 km2
). If the deforestation driv-
ers for this area remain similar to those for the 1985-2007 pe- riod, a REDD mechanism could offset approximately 81% of the total land use changes and potentially lead to conservation of these forests. A strong additional rationale to shift towards conservation for these areas is that deforestation in Aceh and North Sumatra has been most severe in the lowland areas and, as a consequence, most of the remaining forest is on land that is not suitable or only suitable with inputs for various important agricultural crops. In addition, most of this area also qualifies as land that should be protected under Indonesian law, which is partly in place to ensure proper functioning of the ecosystem services from these forests. For remaining orangutan habitat on peatlands similar arguments apply. Carbon value can potentially completely offset other land uses in forests on peat, including oil palm and this alone should be a strong rationale to steer agricul- tural development away from peatlands. In addition, large areas of peatlands are deeper than 3m and should be protected under Indonesian law and as a result of their depth are also not suitable for agricultural expansion.
At the same time it is important to consider how Indonesia can continue to grow its overall economy, provide rural as well as downstream industrial employment, and benefit from globally growing demand for agricultural products. Two approaches in- cluded in this study can support each other: a shift to available lands with ‘low current use value’ (variably called ‘degraded’, ‘fallow’, ‘wasteland’, ‘imperata grasslands’), and an increased productivity on land that is already used for agriculture. It has been a popular hypothesis that intensification of agriculture would reduce the pressure on forests and allow more land to be set aside for conservation. In this simple form, the ‘intensifica- tion’ hypothesis only applies under very specific circumstances and not in general in Sumatra (Tomich et al. 2001). Rather, if intensified agriculture is profitable, it may increase migration into forest margins and enhance conversion. Only in ‘closed economies’, without movement of labour and with inelastic demand, can the intensification hypothesis be relevant. Rather than directly protecting forests, though, intensification options can make conservation possible without direct negative social and economic consequences. Tis can synergize with policy shifts that enhance the availability and use of lands that have current low utility, both from an economic and from an eco- logical perspective. Macro perspectives on what is desirable for Indonesian society as a whole and its international biodiversity
stakeholders (Koh and Ghazoul 2010) need to be reconciled with the incentives and opportunities that currently exist at the farm and enterprise level. Although there is no shortage of ‘low current use value’ that often is not ‘degraded’ from a soil fertility perspective (van Noordwijk et al. 1997; Santoso et al. 1997), much of such lands has contested tenure rules making its use difficult. Technical constraints to intensification and use of ‘low carbon stock’ lands can be overcome with existing tech- nology, if the ‘yields gap’ between potential and actual yields is reduced (Dros 2003; Sheil et al. 2009).
A simple reason for the expansion in the last decade of tree crops into peat areas has been the relative absence of local claims on land, in contrast to mineral soils, which have good forest cover and even more so, land that has a track record of previous human use by being ‘degraded’. Te political platform for reclassifying ‘forest lands without trees’ for use in tree- based agricultural systems, however, has become smaller after the financial expectations that the REDD+ debate brought. A shift of the plantation sector from large uniformly managed blocks to a patchwork of smallholder-based production units is feasible, and likely has social and economic co-benefits, but requires a realignment of economic actors in a ‘green economy’ model (Sheil et al. 2009).
Estimates of the amount of ‘imperata grasslands’ or similar categories have hovered around 10 Mha for Indonesia as a whole, with a gradual shift (‘forest transition’) in its location (Garrity et al. 1997). A recent search of lands with an above- ground carbon stock of less than 40 tC/ha, outside of pro- tected forest categories, outside of irrigated agricultural lands and within the climatic and altitudinal requirements of oil palm yielded about 8.5 Mha for Indonesia as a whole (ICRAF unpublished), roughly similar to the area currently planted for oil palm (4% of the land base of Indonesia; Sheil et al. 2009). In Aceh and North Sumatra alone there may be 1 Mha of such low current use value lands (WWF 2010) which provide for ample opportunities for oil palm expansion without fur- ther deforestation.
Indonesia has become one of the first countries to declare commitments to Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA) to voluntarily reduce its carbon emission (26% emis- sion reduction by 2020 relative to a business as usual baseline).
Large area of newly planted oil palm trees (Nick Lyon/Cockroach Productions)
66
If REDD+ financial flows at the national scale, along with volun- tary NAMA reductions, can be used for making such a u-turn in the land-use trajectories, a combination of continued economic growth with emission reduction and biodiversity conservation is feasible. It will, however, require new ways to overcome the sectoral interests and policies that have led to the current condi- tions. An integrated package of policies will have to include new ways to resolve land tenure issues; ensuring rights of indigenous people; changing a system in which subsidies are given to the wood-pulp industry and other incentives that drive deforesta- tion; improve management in the forestry and other sectors; im- prove national and international law enforcement; assuring the interests of centralized and decentralized management of forest resources, and setting up a transparent mechanism for moni- toring, reporting and verifying land use changes and emissions (Raitzer 2008; Ghazoul et al. 2010; BAPPENAS/UN-REDD 2010; Phelps et al. 2010).