NUSA DUA, Bali (JP): Growing too quickly is the biggest threat to a business, stated the self confessed entrepreneur Terri Irwin, widow of the TV’s best know conservationist.

Describing herself as a business manager, Irwin was drawing an analogy between business and Planet Earth at a gathering of leading environmentalists at the Ayodya Hotel in Bali’s Nusa Dua Monday.

“Our planet may be growing too fast. It’s time to consider the business of Planet Earth, which needs managing”, she said.

It was difficult to know if the room was so packed because of Terri Irwin or the former lead singer of Midnight Oil, Peter Garrett, Australia’s new environment minister’s who came to offer support for Indonesia’s rainforest conservation initiatives.

Or maybe it was because of the President of Indonesia, who flew in to Bali to the launch his government’s Orangutan Action Plan.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke with passion about the endangered Orangutan which he said is an important symbol of Indonesia’s rich biodiversity.

“To save the Orangutan we must save the forests and thus doing our part to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions”, he explained to an audience attending the climate summit.
Wearing the brightest tie – perhaps to compensate for his non-celebrity status – the US ambassador the Indonesia pledged his government’s support for Indonesia’s efforts to save the Orangutan.

He talked about the new Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP), principally funded by the US government, designed to maximize protection and long term survival of Indonesia’s most charismatic mammal.

“The World is Watching, and what are you doing?” is the question posed in a thought-provoking OCSP booklet given out at the event, offering ideas about what can be done to save these magnificent creatures.

Meanwhile, not to be confused with Orangutans, 350 business leaders gathered at the nearby Conrad Hotel for Global Business Day, organized by the World Business Council for Sustainability and the International Chamber of Commerce.

The event was opened by UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, who expressed his belief in the crucial important role of the business sector in fighting climate change.

“To be able to frame a new international climate change deal that is effective in terms of emissions reduction and at the same time makes economic sense, solid input from the business community is indispensable”, he said.

He expressed his hope that this first Global Business Day would mark the start of a new tradition at climate conventions. He suggested that this debut may well represent a “breakthrough for business”.

Throughout the day, business leaders echoed the sentiments of WBCSD chief, Bjorn Stigon, who pressed for governments to create a new global climate policy framework ready for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Some major environmental organizations also participated, including the Washington-based Environmental Defense.

The group’s Indonesian-born carbon markets specialist, Ron Luhur, who now works for the group in Washington, expressed enthusiasm for the role of business.

“Events like this are crucial and you can’t solve climate change without business on board”, he said.

Pity that businesswoman Terri Irwin couldn’t attend the business day as well.

But the business of climate change resolution gets even more serious now as the big political guns arrive at these important climate talks. The world is watching. (Jonathan Wootliff)

The writer is an independent sustainable development consultant, specializing in the building of productive relationships between companies and NGOs. He can be contacted at jonathan@wootliff.com

Source: The Jakarta Post

We agree with our friends at Nature Alert:
This article should probably be read with a GREAT deal of cynicism. If the past is anything to go by, such promises from the Indonesian government are worthless. One example is the Indonesian government’s signature in 2005 to the Kinshasa Declaration on Great Apes. By signing this they promised to protect the habitat of great apes: instead, they sold it off to palm oil companies.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 Jakarta Post

NUSA DUA, Bali (JP): President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched Monday an action plan to conserve the country’s endangered orangutans and release those currently in sanctuaries back into the wild.

The president said that conserving the primate would also help protect the forest from deforestation and store greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change.

Under the program, which lasts until 2017, the carbon dioxide (CO2) stored through avoided forest deforestation could be traded on the carbon market and the money could then be used to conserve orangutans and boost the country’s economy, the president said.

“The core target of this plan of action is to stabilize orangutans and their habitat from now until 2017,” Yudhoyono said on the sidelines of the international climate change conference in Bali.
“By saving, regenerating and sustainably managing the forests, we are also doing our part in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, while contributing to the economic development of Indonesia,”

Over the last 35 years, the country has lost about 50,000 orangutans due to their shrinking habitat as well as illegal trafficking. Experts say the species will vanish by 2050 if greater action is not taken to protect the primate.

“I can think of no reason to ignore such compelling evidence of the importance of saving our forests…forests lost will not only kill the rich biodiversity, but also become the source of 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions,” the president said.

The national action plan for conserving orangutans consists four strategies namely orangutan conservation management, policies, partnership development as well as funding strategy.
The Nature Conservancy, as the world’s leading conservation organization, has pledged US$1 millions in aid to support the action plan.

“As much as one million hectares of the orangutan habitat, scheduled for conversion to palm oil plantations, will be saved through implementation of the action plan,” said Erik Meijaard, senior scientist with the Conservancy.

“This could lead to 9,800 orangutans being saved and prevent 700 million tons of carbon from being released.”

Meijaard, who is also a science advisor for orangutan conservation science program (OCSP), said the world’s emerging carbon market would make conservation financially viable.

“If payments for avoided deforestation become an official mechanism in the global climate agreements, then buyers will likely compensate Indonesia for its forest protection. Protecting orangutans will then lead to increased economic development in the country. Such a triple-win situation is not a dream. With some political will, it can soon be reality.”

The United States has said that it will commit to $2.8 million in new funds to support biodiversity and climate change activities in Indonesia, including the orangutan habitat conservation.

The Forestry Ministry data reveals there are currently over 6,650 Sumatran orangutans and 55,000 Borneo orangutans in the wild.

The Indonesian government has long come under pressure from the international community to protect orangutan species and prevent rampant trafficking of the primates.

To make it worse, forest fires and land clearing have been an added threat to the orangutan population.

The ministry says deforestation has directly and indirectly led to the death of 3,000 orangutans per year since the 1970s. (Adianto P. Simamora)

Peatland is increasingly making way for oil palm plantations. But with climate change being linked with the destruction of this vital carbon sink, rehabilitation of the land is in order.

By HILARY CHIEW

INITIALLY, there was vehement denial. But, increasingly there is gradual admission. The facts that peat is a vital carbon sink and that disturbed peat is a significant source of carbon emission are being accepted by the oil palm industry.

Expansion of landbank by major industry players is the order of the day. More land � forested or degraded � is being converted into plantations. Spurred by escalating crude palm oil (CPO) prices and the hype over biofuel, oil palm ventures are spreading rapidly across Sarawak, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Peat swamp forests, a feature of lowland forests, especially in Sarawak and the Riau, Jambi and Kalimantan provinces of Indonesia, are prime targets.

Although the industry has set up the voluntary compliance body called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to tackle the harmful effects of their activities which include clearing, burning and draining of the water-logged forest that spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, there remain some quarters within the industry that are reluctant to assume responsibility for their actions.

At a recent workshop addressing the sustainability issue of oil palm plantations, certain parties � notably plantation companies from Sarawak, such as Sarawak Oil Palm Bhd (SOPB) � questioned the accuracy of a widely referred study associating peatland destruction with climate change.

The Wetlands International report entitled Peat-CO2: Assessment of CO2 emissions from drained peatlands in South-East Asia estimates that 1,400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) were emitted by peatland fires across the region each year between 1997 and 2006, with an additional 600 million tonnes per year being emitted from peatland decomposition caused by drainage.

Detractors were sceptical of the 632 tonnes per ha per year used as the emission average, considering it �too high�. The researchers reckoned the figure was �fairly conservative�, given that the emission range was between 355 tonnes and 874 tonnes in 2006.

There is also dispute over the rate of oxidisation according to different peat types. But the basic conclusion that disturbed peat is an emission source is no longer doubted.

Sarawak is expected to attract the bulk of oil palm plantation investment over the next decade and, already, one million hectares have been earmarked to produce the priced commodity for the next three years.

Towards this end, the RSPO executive board has commissioned a detailed study on carbon emission rates from degraded peatland that will likely result in another criterion for minimising greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Already, one of its 39 criteria forbids development of oil palm on peat soil from November 2005, taking into account that both virgin and degraded peat swamp forests have high conservation value.

Others criticised the so-called unfair and disproportioned attention on oil palm in the light of emerging information that temperate peatlands were also developed for soyabean, the commodity�s arch-rival in the global edible oil market.

Until indisputable data is obtained, some suggested that the industry should go ahead with conversion of peatland to accommodate expansion plans.

Peat expert Faizal Parish of Global Environment Centre acknowledged that all over the world, the valuable carbon store is being threatened by drainage and fire � the largest single source of carbon emission from the land use sector (3.5 billion tonnes per annum) � but it has been most dramatic in this region in the last decade.

The Mega Rice Project in Central Kalimantan continues to release carbon through its network of 4,600km of drainage canals and frequent peat fires.

Parish noted that cultivation of corn for ethanol production in the United States and soyabean plantations in China are the culprits of peat destruction and carbon emitters too. Soya is much less efficient in terms of land use compared with oil palm � to produce one tonne of soya oil requires at least five times more land area than palm oil.

Redemptive role

Far from being doomed, Parish said the industry is in a unique position to play a key role in combating global warming.

We should not take the findings negatively. We should focus on opportunities arising from the findings instead. Imagine the Malaysian Palm Oil Association (MPOA) transforming into the Malaysian Peatland Offset Association 30 years from now,� envisioned Parish of the carbon-offset potential of companies operating on peat.

He said oil palm growers possess the labour skills and resources to rehabilitate degraded peatlands. �Instead of digging ditches, block them. Instead of cutting, replant.�

So, instead of trading in CPO, the future for oil palm growers could be trading in carbon instead.

MPOA head of research and development Chew Jit Seng said the industry needs time for the carbon offset business idea to sink in.

Under the right hydrological conditions, peat swamp forests that cover a mere 3% of the earth�s surface can continue to act as net carbon sinks. It is estimated that the forests store 42,000 mega tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 70 times the current annual global emissions from fossil fuel burning.

�We encourage those plantations on peat to adopt best management practices already applied by some companies. This includes a good water management regime, for a start,� Parish urged, adding that plantations should implement the RSPO�s Principles and Criteria (P&C) towards sustainable palm oil production as soon as possible.

The RSPO P&C was rolled out in 2005 and underwent a two-year trial by various companies in Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Colombia and Ghana. The implementation is paving the way for certification of sustainable palm oil.

Avoided deforestation is the buzzword in the current battle to curb further carbon emission that is contributing to climate change. The World Bank has announced a US$250mil (RM850mil) investment fund to reward countries that keep their forests intact, hence trading in carbon credits earned from peatland rehabilitation is on the cards.

Developing countries, especially Indonesia, which has 25 million ha of tropical peat forests, is eyeing the huge carbon offset potential. Deforestation, peatland degradation and forest fires have put Indonesia among the world�s top three largest emitters of GHG.

Carbon release from peatland in Indonesia represents 58% of global peatland emission and is almost twice the emission from fossil fuel burning in the country. Oil palm cultivation is the major culprit for the conversion of peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

In Malaysia, about 10% of the 4.2 million ha planted with oil palm is currently on peat soil, while the rest are grown on mineral soils. Of the 400,000ha, the largest area or 75% is in Sarawak.

Source: http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/12/11/lifefocus/19387085&sec=lifefocus

December 10, 2007 12:46 PM

BALI, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesia has begun a 10-year program to save endangered orangutans from extinction by protecting tropical jungle habitat from logging, mining and palm oil plantations, its president said Monday.

The plan, revealed on the sidelines of the Bali climate change conference, aims to preserve up to 2.5 million acres of forest on the Indonesian half of Borneo island.

As many as 50,000 orangutans have been lost over the past 35 years due to shrinking habitat. “If this continues, these majestic creatures will likely face extinction by 2050,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said.

“To save orangutans, we must save the forests,” he said.

Two thirds of Borneo’s 74 million acres of primary forest have already been destroyed and environmental groups say the remainder is disappearing at a rate of 300 football fields per hour.

The Nature Conservancy, a coalition of non-governmental groups, pledged $1 million to the program, which “could lead to 9,800 orangutans being saved,” said Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist for the coalition.

As of January 2004, about 6,650 Sumatran orangutans and 55,000 Borneo orangutans remained in the wild, while rapid deforestation has directly and indirectly led to around 3,000 orangutan deaths every year since 1970, the organization said.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7140830,00.html

Reuters
December 10 2007
By Niluksi Koswanage

CAREY ISLAND, Malaysia, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The Netherlands warned on Monday it will not renew subsidies for palm-based biofuel until global producers meet its environmental requirements.

The world’s biggest palm-oil producers, including Malaysia and Indonesia, may take about two years to meet the needed levels, Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer said, following a meeting with Malaysian Commodities Minister Peter Chin.

The Netherlands, the largest consumer of palm oil in the European Union, will renew its subsidy system for green energy next year, but will mandate stringent criteria to help limit environmental damage.

The Netherlands fears the destruction of tropical forests for palm oil cultivation will increase greenhouse gas emissions, worsen plant loss and reduce animal diversity.

“Until the problems are solved, there will be no subsidy for palm oil,” Cramer told reporters at Carey Island palm estates, some 100 km from Kuala Lumpur.

“We hope to solve the problem in two years.”

Global demand for biofuels has soared as countries look for alternatives to fossil fuels to fight climate change and solve energy security problems.

“It makes no sense to use palm oil for bio-energy purposes while the carbon dioxide produced is more than what we are actually trying to save, particularly when you cut down peatforests,” she said.

The Netherlands is particularly vulnerable to climate change fuelled by carbon-dioxide emissions as two-thirds of its territory lie below sea level.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7140894

ABC Gets a Rare Glimpse at Borneo’s Orangutan Rehab Project
By MARGARET CONLEY

Visit ABC News to see an orangutan photo essay.

BORNEO, Indonesia, Dec. 7, 2007 — The orangutan population is in danger and seriously on the decline due to hunting, illegal trade and deforestation. Some say they may become extinct within the next decade.

Hope for their survival rests in a safe haven in Borneo at a sanctuary called Nyaru Menteng.

The orphaned and often injured orangutans are brought here and put through a rehabilitation program before being released back into the wild.

Lone Droscher-Nielsen, an orangutan enthusiast from Denmark, co-founded the project with the Bornean Orangutan Society (BOS) with the support of local forestry officials.

“It all started when I came here on holiday in 1993. I came back and stayed,” Droscher-Nielsen told ABC News. A personal passion project, Droscher-Nielsen even welcomed orangutans into her own home — to live with her while she cared for them.

Over seven years, she has had anywhere from 12 to 24 animal roommates. It wasn’t until recently that she got her house back to herself.

Today what’s left of the orangutan population exists only in the rainforests of Borneo and northern Sumatra in Indonesia. Orangutans have close to 97 percent of the same genetic makeup as humans and are arguably the most intelligent of the primates. The word “orangutan,” derived from Malay and Indonesian, translates to “person of the forest.”

These forest people spend most of their time hanging around in trees — their arms may reach up to 6.5 feet — significantly longer than their 4-5 foot bodies.

The sanctuary, an hour and a half flight from Jakarta, is nestled in a quiet, isolated location surrounded by lush tropical trees. It has 183 staff members for 641 orangutans, allowing for a ratio of a little over three orangutans per person.

On the first day of arrival, each orangutan is quarantined for one to two weeks. They receive a general health checkup, are treated for parasites and tested for tuberculosis and hepatitis A, B and C. Visitors to the sanctuary are advised to stay at least 25 feet away from the animals to protect both species.

The youngest orangutans, under 2 and a half years old, are taken to baby school. Some wear diapers. They are encouraged to climb trees and make nests.

The 2- and 3-year-olds have class every day where they learn how to be orangutans. They are led by the staff, some holding their hands as they walk, to forest school where they are encouraged to find food on their own and relearn the skills necessary to survive in the forests again.

They train their muscles to survive in the forest in an area specially designed to replicate tree branches and trunks with swinging ropes and tires. Their day ends back at the sanctuary for socialization time where they learn to mix with other orangutans.

The older residents of the sanctuary hang out on prerelease islands that staff visit daily to feed and check on their health. But for the most part they are left to their own devices as this is the last step in the rehabilitation process before they are allowed to go feral.

Droscher-Nielsen and BOS hope their hard work will pay off so the orangutans can return safely to their natural habitat. So far, they have been successful with 36 orangutans now living back in the wild.

But the fight for survival is an uphill battle, as the orangutan’s habitat is increasingly threatened. Their homes are being destroyed, logged, burned, or planted over, in some cases illegally, in a developing country whose income relies on natural resources. Recently much of the orangutan’s land has been turned into palm oil plantations. Palm oil is a widely produced edible vegetable oil, commonly used for cooking and cosmetics.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, in Borneo and Sumatra the orangutan population has declined by 30-50 percent in the last 10 years, with just over 60,000 orangutans left that survive.

Droscher-Nielsen and her team work seven days a week at the sanctuary to try to save the last of the orangutans, one life at a time.

Source: http://www.abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3969647&page=1

BOGOR, West Java (JP): REDD is the latest acronym in climate change town. It stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and is also now the hottest show leading up to the next UN climate meeting.

One of the strongest advocates is the UN climate meeting host, Indonesia, as deforestation and forest degradation is believed tocontribute 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emission.

Under the proposed REDD scheme, Indonesia has said that it would select four forests from across the country to pilot the project. The four forest projects would be located in South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, North Sumatra and Southeast Sulawesi (The Jakarta Post, Oct. 26, 2007).

It is not yet clear, however, how exactly four pilot projects will help reduce overall emissions in Indonesia instead of just push more deforestation elsewhere.

On the other hand, the provincial governments of Aceh, West Papua, and Papua, supported by international NGOs and courted by carbon brokers, have been actively seeking ways to implement REDD in their respective territories.

A Forest Watch Indonesia report shows Papua and West Papua have the biggest intact forest landscape in Indonesia, totaling 17,9 million hectares (Greenpeace/FWI, 2006).

Being as environmentally aware and close to mother earth as they are, the Papuan people and governments have repeatedly shown their commitment to sustainable development, recognition of indigenous peoples and their tenure rights, and community logging, which means community-based and sustainable timber and non-timber products and environmental services forestry.

Some weeks ago the governors of both provinces stated their commitment to shipping only processed timber instead of the logs and sawn timber of today. For this, Time Magazine has named Papua Governor Barnabas Suebu, along with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Prince Charles, a Hero of the Environment.

Aceh is also pushing forward with policies for a logging moratorium, which will lead to redesigning forestry in the province. The province is taking initial steps towards producing a pilot project under the REDD mechanism. This pilot project in the Ulu Masen ecosystem in North Aceh, is currently being audited for compliance with the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards.

However, while much focus has been placed on avoiding deforestation in Aceh and Papua, the ongoing disasters are occurring mostly in Kalimantan and Sumatra. Indonesia’s carbon emissions come from forest fires, conversion of forest into other uses, unsustainable industrial logging, and other destructive activities that affect forests.

Of these, the destruction of peat swamp forests is thought to be the most significant as a hectare of 1 meter deep peat swamp forest holds 600 tons of carbon, compared to approximately 200 tons of carbon in one hectare of tropical forest. The peat layer in these forests is usually 10 to 20 meters deep. This carbon stock is be released during peat land fires, or when canals are built and peat swamp forests are dried and turned into paddy fields or palm oil plantations. A case of the latter is the one million hectare peat land project in Kalimantan, initiated under the Soeharto regime, and efforts to revive them are still alive today.

Dried peat swamp forests risk fires, again releasing more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. So, logically, if Indonesia wants to cut its emissions, and if the world is really serious about climate change, deforestation and forest degradation, and more importantly forest fires and peat swamp forests’ destruction must be addressed.

Daily we see the most active proponents of trade in order to reduce emissions from deforestation, forest degradation, and land use changes, are international organizations and consultants. Indonesia has been lagging behind in terms of actually developing projects on the ground.

If Indonesia wants to significantly contribute to reducing emissions for the world, it needs to address the more difficult challenge of rehabilitating and restoring forests in heavily deforested Kalimantan and Sumatra, and prevent forest fires. And, unless overall policy and practices are changed, this will also mean that the government needs to drop the huge palm oil and industrial timber plantation expansion plans significantly. Indeed, this mammoth challenge has come with higher economic costs, keeping carbon brokers and potential carbon buyers away from the islands.

The Ministry of Forestry has spent Rp 8,7 trillion (approximately US$934 million) since 2003 for forest and land rehabilitation. In a sense Indonesia does not need to rely (too much or at all?) on the carbon market to finance rehabilitating forests and prevent forest fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra.

Instead, the government should rely more on the local communities, recognizing their rights of tenure, and facilitate them to implement community-based and sustainable forestry in a community logging scheme – it is in supporting these activities that deforestation rates have been reduced, for example in Konaweha Selatan in Southeast Sulawesi, or Gunung Kidul in Yogyakarta and Wonogiri in Central Java.

Setting up carbon forests, national parks and protected areas, or developing legality standards for timber and timber trading, will be just dealing with the symptoms of deforestation. In contrast, working on inequalities in land tenure, discrimination against indigenous peoples and farmers, participatory democracy, corruption and military involvement in resource economics and politics, over-consumption in high-income countries and uncontrolled industrialization, will mean
addressing the underlying causes of deforestation.

REDD trading proposals should then be critically analyzed and put into the wider context of deforestation and not reduced to the focus of emissions from deforestation. The basic concept should be expanded from just rewarding the good to remain good, to also rewarding the bad to become good. Even if this means creating new acronyms such as Redemption (reducing emission from deforestation and degradation but more importantly from preventing forest fire and peat swamp forests’ destruction), or perhaps even Real Action (reducing emission by addressing the underlying causes of deforestation). –/A. Ruwindrijarto/

The writer is President of Telapak (www.telapak.org), a forestry non-governmental organization based in Bogor, West Java.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/climate/index.php?menu=stories&detail=101

Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur
December 9, 2007

When a Malaysian palm oil plantation owner Michael Lee saw that his clear-cutting of a mangrove forest was wiping out the habitat of proboscis monkeys, he made a very unbusiness-like decision: he called for a halt to the destruction.

Setting aside a 300-metre wide and 6-km long strip of forest in northern Sabah, Lee has provided a sanctuary for up to 80 of the unique-looking and endangered monkeys.

Known for their long noses, potbellies and distinctive colouring, the proboscis look like they stepped off the set of a Star Trek movie, but their future is bleak and they may become extinct within a decade.

Lee’s sanctuary at Labuk Bay is doing its small part to conserve the fewer than 7,000 proboscis monkeys left on the island of Borneo, the only place they can be found. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) estimates that 3,000 of the monkeys remain in Malaysian Borneo - about 2,000 in Sabah and the rest in Sarawak - with the remainder in Kalimantan, or Indonesian Borneo.

To see the proboscis up close at Labuk Bay, it is a rough drive over a 15-km gravel road lined by oil palms, a common landscape in Malaysia where almost half of the cultivated land consists of the trees.

Malaysia has been in the forefront of feeding the bio diesel boom, and has been cutting its forests at an accelerated rate to make room for the palms that produce the oil, which is also used in cooking and cosmetics.

The crop is coming under increasing criticism however. At the UN climate conference in Bali, Wetlands International released a report saying the Kyoto Protocol made a mistake in supporting the use of bio fuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The conservation group said the burning of peat lands for the oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia was releasing about 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air every year.

Ahead of the climate conference, the UN Development Programme said in its annual report that ‘expansion of cultivation of (oil palm) in East Asia has been associated with widespread deforestation and violation of human rights of indigenous people.’

The UNDP report also noted that Malaysia has registered the fastest rate of increase in terms of forests converted into plantations.

The destruction is also destroying the diet of the proboscis, which consists mainly of mangrove shoots and leaves, even poisonous ones. The monkey’s protruding belly houses a complex chambered digestive system that uses bacteria to digest cellulose to neutralise toxins from certain leaves.

And despite their 400 acres of mangrove forest, the proboscis monkeys of Labuk Bay still have a hard time finding enough food and often turn up for twice-daily feedings, giving visitors a rare close encounter.

Mealtime is announced by the banging of a metal tray, and the trees are soon being bent under the weight of the incredibly agile monkeys as they jump from limb to limb to make their way to an observation platform.

They live in small groups of 10 to 32 animals, in either a harem or bachelor group, with dominant males having to constantly defend their positions. At the sanctuary there are three harem groups and one group consisting of juvenile, adolescent and adult males.

Also known locally as Dutchman monkey in reference to the former colonial rulers, the exact purpose of their pendulous nose isn’t known. However, the noses of the males do swell and turn red when they become excited or angry, and perhaps aid in making the distinctive loud, honking noise they are known for.

After feasting on cucumbers and sugar-free pancakes, the monkeys’ head back into the woods, returning to what is left of their fast-shrinking natural habitat.

Palangka Raya (ANTARA News) - Dutch Development Cooperation Minister Bert Koenders and his entourage arrived in Central Kalimantan`s provincial capital of Palangka Raya on Saturday to discuss matters related to deforestation, peat land and forest fires in the province with Governor Teras Narang.

“Kalimantan has serious problems related with deforestation, peat lands and forest fires, and thus we have offered our cooperation assistance to deal with them,” Koenders said after being given a traditional welcome here.

Accompanied by a 16-member delegation, Koenders said he would continue to monitor developments in the solution of the forestry problem in Central Kalimantan.

The Dutch minister was visting Central Kalimantan on his way to Bali to attend the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference.

Forest and peat lands in Kalimantan, according to Koenders, were not only important for Indonesia but also for the rest of the world, and therefore they had to be managed well.

He said the Dutch government had extended financial assistance of around 2 million euro for a master plan to manage one-million hectares of peat land to prevent floods and forest fires.

In addition, he said, the Netherlands had also provided several non-governmental organizations from the two countries with 5 million euro to cooperate in empowering Central Kalimantan people living around forests.

“The master plan is important for natural preservation and biodiversity. Therefore, we want to ensure that the people in Central Kalimantan will lead a better life and benefit from forests,” Koenders said.

Meanwhile, Governor Teras Narang said the assistance from the Dutch government for the peat land rehabilitation project would end in the middle of next year.

Source: Antara News

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor, in Jambi, Sumatra

Three miles down a dirt road into a supposedly protected rainforest in central Sumatra, the whine of a chainsaw burst out from the trees.

We had reached the front line in the conflict over illegal logging in the tropics - finding a solution to which is likely to be the ultimate test of any pious agreement about saving tropical forests in Bali next week.

On our way down the forest tracks that had been turned into mousse by the rain, it became clear that we were entering disputed territory.Little forest was left near the road and some of it had already been burned by migrant settlers ready for the planting of rubber and oil palm.

The first sign that we had stumbled on illegal loggers themselves, was an unassuming pile of roofing timbers, skilfully cut straight with a chainsaw and dropped off for collection by the side of the road.Our convoy stopped while the black-uniformed forest guards examined the evidence and lit clove-scented Indonesian cigarettes. Then the illegal logger, who had gone silent, struck up again.

And two guards set off into the dusk in a determined manner, after a word from Sean Marron, head of the Harapan Rainforest project, set up by a consortium of conservationists - the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Burung Indonesia and Birdlife International.

This time the guards would just issue a warning but next day they would return from two other sorties against loggers in the trees grinning and bringing confiscated trophies such as chainsaw and a set of motorcycle keys. In this part of Sumatra’s rapidly dwindling rainforests, the illegal loggers are beginning to face resourceful opposition.

But is it already too late? Or could hundreds of projects based on this one be replicated around the tropics under some Bali agreement, funded by the First World’s increasing willingness to offset the carbon we emit?

Harapan, which straddles the border of two provinces near Jambi in central Sumatra, is a piece of lowland rainforest the size of Greater London. It’s name means “hope” in Indonesian and the project is intended to bring a grain of hope to those, in Indonesia and abroad, who despaired that they would ever see an end to rainforest destruction.

Harapan’s 250,000 acres are the first logged concession to be taken over with the explicit aim of ecosystem restoration. In a sign of how seriously this is being taken by Indonesian central government - which this week also announced plans to seize the funds of illegal loggers - the law was recently changed to make this a valid use of a logging concession.

Harapan was selected by Burung Indonesia after a survey of several exhausted concessions showed its degraded forest was unusually rich in species. These range from mammals such as the Sumatran tiger, Asian elephant and clouded leopard and seven species of primates, to 235 species of bird, some 37 of them globally threatened with extinction.

Scientific thinking had assumed that in degraded forest tigers would exist at a lower density than they do in primary forest. In fact, because there are many more wild pigs at Harapan in the once-logged forest, there were far more Sumatran tigers than officialdom had expected.

The riches of Harapan’s interior were evident on a nine-hour journey we made through it one day this week.

In the depths of the forest, in part that had been clear-felled in the 1970s, we saw the tracks of a young tiger, together with those of a Malaysian tapir, a leopard cat and a porcupine.

There was also dung from a less recent visit from wild elephants, now sprouting little clumps of green from the seeds contained within.

While we waited for the 4×4 vehicles to winch themselves out of trench-sized waterlogged ruts - the Harapan consortium has decided to leave the roads unrepaired to deter logging lorries - we trained our binoculars on a greater corcal (a relative of the pheasant), red jungle fowl, a Rufous bellied eagle and (a favourite of mine) a greater racket-tailed drongo, which is black and white with two trailing tail feathers like a bird of paradise.

It was therefore depressing to think that forest on a neighbouring concession has by and large all the same species.

It is shortly to join other surrounding forest in being logged, thus beginning a cycle of commercial exploitation and official neglect which has destroyed all but 600,000 hectares out of Sumatra’s 20 million hectares of lowland forest and put millions of hectares of land to waste.

Sumatra has lost a staggering 80 per cent of its old growth forest in an orgy of logging, both legal and illegal, over the past 30 years, putting it in a league occupied only by Kalimantan - Indonesian Borneo - and the eastern Amazon.

The cycle of destruction, which so far affects only Harapan’s north east corner, works like this. A failure of officialdom to enforce the rules in logging concessions means too much timber is taken out.

A similar failure to enforce land rights, despite the fact that the government owns all forest land, often the result of corruption at all levels, means illegal loggers move in, often in collusion with illegal squatters.

The squatters, often economic migrants from overcrowded Java who can get here on a bus, are often taken advantage of by unscrupulous local leaders who use them to annex large areas of land for themselves and while charging the squatters fraudulently for their supposed rights to the land.

This appeared to be the game three miles inside Harapan’s north eastern boundary, where a new mosque had been built, three walls of a school and 100 new homes. The quality of the building in this Wild West town was high, far higher than that employed by local subsistence farmers, whom the Harapan project tolerates if not actively encourages.

The strategy was clear: if the homes and the school could be occupied, then local government could be persuaded effectively to legitimise the land-grab, annexing in the process 12,000 out of Harapan’s 250,000 acres. Our first illegal logger was one of this vanguard.

Harapan has been asking the police to intervene for more than two months. This did not at first happen. Then, with Bali on the horizon and questions likely to be asked, the police launched three raids in a week.

Out of 300 illegal loggers with chainsaws operating in the forest, 200 have now gone and the co-ordinator of the new settlement on the north east flank is in jail. More ominously, police seized a lorryload of illegal timber, only for it to be seized back at gunpoint by soldiers who were on the side of the loggers.

There could be more nervous moments to come for Harapan’s ornithological backers, who find themselves playing in a very big league.

When the former forestry company that ran the concession tried to displace illegal loggers and squatters, it found its camp under attack from men armed with parangs (bush knives) who burned it down, together with bulldozers and other machinery.

For this reason, Sean Marron places his faith in discussions, rather than confrontations, building a constituency among the locals by training them as guards, and an insistence that any real enforcement will be done by the police. The forest police, however, whose expenses the consortium have undertaken to pay, have yet to turn up.

These are still early days for Harapan, for it only got going in May, but it is so unusual that it is already being used as an example 950 miles away in Bali this week - as a possible model for using money from the rich North to fund the preservation of rainforests in the poor South, through carbon credits.

Sir Nicholas Stern, who has visited Harapan, will be in Bali next week. He thinks that saving the annual conflagration of the rainforests and paying for their regeneration is the cheapest way of stopping the release of millions of tons of carbon each year.

A study by the University of Michigan estimates that carbon credits could generate $515 million a year for the Indonesian government, nearly double the $258 million it currently gets in tax revenue from logging and palm oil.

I asked Sean Marron and his Indonesian colleague and head of operations, Muhammad Zubairin whether they thought this would work.

Marron did not much like one of the ideas going the rounds in Bali this week which is that there should be a global fund which could reward Indonesia if the amount of green on the satellite pictures increases each year.

He did not think the money would get to the right place.
A series of bottom-up projects, on the other hand, which bought up degraded forest and allowed it to regenerate?

A better idea, he thought, provided it had sufficient money to buy out the man on the chainsaw who tends to earn relatively little out of logging.

If these were purely commercial deals, there would be no guarantee that companies would go for forestry that would save existing rainforest and rare and endangered species. They might prefer commercial forestry projects. On the other hand, conservationists might use the money to pull off projects that would not otherwise happen.

It was left to Mr Zubairin a canny former oil plantation manager, to enter a note of caution. He said: “We’ve had a lot of assistance for projects in the past but only some have really been successful. It all depends on whether there is good governance and alternative economic opportunities for local people. It is not just a question of funding. If we don’t all share the same genuine commitment it is going to be tough.”

In other words, negotiators in Bali are going to have to think as much about the developing world issues of tackling corruption, poor law enforcement and land rights for the poor as about climate.

Pekanbaru, Indonesia - Muymunah is 75 and has seen a lot in her long life, but she’s never experienced anything like the burning of tropical forests in Sumatra.

“Everything is burning here. Everything,” said the Indonesian woman who farms land along Indragiri River on Sumatra. She gestures to a field, saying two years ago it was a lush forest. Now there’s nothing there but charred stumps. When she notices one smoldering, she calls her daughter, who brings a bucket of water and puts out the flames.

In this region of Indonesia as elsewhere in the country, the forest is disappearing at a breathtaking rate. The environmental organisation Greenpeace estimates 300 football fields are destroyed every hour. The reason is palm oil, which is in demand in part because it is added to diesel fuel to make it more environmentally friendly.

Along the Indragiri River the tropical forest grows on a layer of thick turf. In order to ease the transport of valuable timber after it is felled, loggers dig canals. As a result the water level drops and the turf dries out.

“When the trees are gone, the ground temperature increases to as high as 70 degrees” Celsius, said Indonesian forestry worker Jonotoro. The slightest spark is enough to cause a huge fire.
“It burns like a pile of matches,” said Michael Stuewe of the environmental organisation World Wildlife Fund. And it has emerged as an enormous climate issue for Indonesia. Because of the destruction of the forests Indonesia has become the third-largest source of carbon dioxide emissions caused by human activity, behind the US and China.

The cutting, burning and processing of the trees also exposes the forest floor, which in its natural overgrown state stores an enormous amount of CO2 - six to nine times more than a typical forest.

Indonesia, host of the world climate conference now under way on the resort island of Bali, plans to make protection of tropical forests an important topic during the meeting. In particular, Jakarta wants to be financially compensated for taking steps to protect the forests.

The compensation would have to be at least as lucrative as granting licenses to deforest, said environmental economist Fitrian Ardiansyah. The problem is that while the central government in Jakarta has passed a number of laws to protect the forest, local officials can be bribed to ignore them.

Muymunah knows nothing about those shenanigans. She sees only that nothing is as it was before the diggers arrived. The village community council is planting everything possible to help the ground recover. But nothing thrives on the dry and scorched turf.

When the palm oil companies announced they wanted to convert the fields into plantations, the residents of Kuala Cenaku were skeptical, though the deal was attractive. Lands belonging to a village typically got 40 per cent of the profit, they were told.

The diggers arrived two years ago and the trees disappeared. The village didn’t receive a cent. The company torched the land last year, causing respiratory problems throughout the village for weeks. The residents are furious, said village leader Mursyid M Ali. Black sludge flows from the turf into the Indragiri and fish catches are down. Mursyid wants to hear nothing more about palm oil, which he said grows poorly on the land around Kuala Cenaku.

Jonko Virta, a Finn who manages a business line worldwide for the paper and pulp company April, admits the turf isn’t exactly desirable from a paper-production perspective, but demand worldwide for paper is huge.

The pulp factory’s annual supply of wood is equal to 10,000 hectares. The pulp is manufactured into all sorts of paper products - from facial tissue to diapers - and the company constantly submits applications for licenses to cut trees. But companies like April do not see themselves as destroyers of forests or carbon dioxide reserves.

Replanting trees is as natural as a baby suckling from its mother, said Virta, who proudly gives tours of the huge Palalawan plantation about an hour’s drive south of Pekanbaru.
“We plant two million acacias here every year,” he said. The company owns 91,000 hectares which have been planted with acacia trees since 2001. Acacia’s grow about 2 centimetres a day and can be cut after six years.

Virta considers the company a steward of nature, though he admits the best approach for the forest would be to cover it with a glass dome and leave it alone. But that would not be economical, said Virta’s environment manager Eliezer Lorenzo. People whose livelihood is the forest also live here, Lorenzo said. There must be a balance between people, planet and profit.

The real villain in the forests of Sumatra are contract loggers who without regard to the water supply have dug deep trenches to ease the transport of logs, said Virta. Conversely, April has built 1,000 dams to prevent the water table from falling more than 50 centimetres, Virta said.

In return for future licenses April promises to preserve the few bits of forest still intact. It wants to create plantations around these forests as a way to protect them against illegal logging.

Environmentalists look upon the proposal skeptically. Three years ago April built a 20-kilometre-long road near the natural preserve Tesso Nilo near Pekanbaru. The goal was to better connect the company’s forests to its factory, but from a helicopter it is easy to see brown areas near the road, revealing the work of illegal loggers who also use the motorway.

One of the illegal loggers is Beni Nainggolan, whose house is less than 10 metres from the edge of the road. He, his five brothers and parents are one of about 30 families that moved to the area from northern Sumatra after hearing of the opportunities in logging. Typically, the families pay middlemen a nominal fee for access to the forest, then clear away the trees, sell the logs and plant palm oil trees.

These small operators, however, are not the ones causing major damage, the WWF says. But when the large companies come because cheap labour is available, that is the real problem.

Source: The Nation Newspaper, Thailand

Orangutan Charly, the oldest fertile orangutan in captivity and the father of (at least) 18, celebrated his 50th birthday with some cake at the Frankfurt Zoo, where he has lived since 1978!

[Photo: AP/Bernd Kammerer]

Source: http://gawker.com/news/monkey-pictures/happy-50th-birthday-orangutan-charly-330708.php