Debunking deforestation

Jan 8, 2025
Indonesian President-elect Prabowo Subianto, when casting his vote in the 2024 elections in Hambalang, Bogor, Indonesia. Contributor: Zaigham Priatna / Alamy Stock Photo

Indonesia’s new president, former disgraced general Prabowo Subianto, is making an awkward discovery:  gaining respect in the international community as head of a nation of 280 million civilians is not the same as ordering a special squad to intimidate.

You can’t force the masses to grow more food, work smarter and change habits – then expect no blow-back from the rest of the world if your policies endanger all.

Like Donald Trump promoting hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as unverified COVID-19 cures, Prabowo suffers from the dictator’s delusion – that a ballot-box win (58%) turns a politician into a seer refuting established science.

At the end of December, he reportedly told delegates to a national development congress in Jakarta that more jungle should be cleared for palm oil plantations.  The address was broadcast:

“We don’t need to be afraid of endangering — what’s it called — deforestation, right?

“Oil palms are trees, right? They have leaves, right? They produce oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide. So why are we being accused (of deforestation)? Those things they say (about deforestation) don’t make any sense.”

Although there have been no threats against the existing plantations (how do foreign powers seize palms?), Prabowo has sprayed the zone with paranoia. His favourite colour is khaki, not green.

He’s ordered the military, the police and regional officials “to enhance security measures around palm oil plantations throughout Indonesia” because he reckons Indonesia’s palm oil commodities are being targeted.

“They (unspecified) really need our palm oil. It turns out that palm oil is a strategic material,” Prabowo told the planning meeting.  That’s not news – it has been an internationally important commodity for decades.

The British-based Gecko Project which claims to be a non-profit news agency tracing land use, reports that Prabowo’s net worth is US$133 million:

“In media profiles, he is reported as owning multiple companies involved in coal mining, forestry and other sectors …at a campaign event in January, he took a rival to task for underestimating the scale of the land over which he presides. “It’s not 340,000 hectares, it’s closer to 500,000 hectares.”

Fears of foreigners taking jobs, land and lifestyles is a standard theme in right-wing politicians’ playbooks almost everywhere – think Peter Dutton’s 2018 African gang violence comments keeping Victorians housebound.

In reality, Prabowo’s thundering is not about an armed invasion by 1.6 million fat gut Ozzies taking a break from boozing in Bali, but an economic assault. China has major stakes in nickel mines and smelters in Sulawesi and has lent the Republic more than US$27 billion so far.

Oil palms store carbon ineffectively, according to Dr Herry Purnomo, a professor at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture: “Forests store around 300 tons of CO2 per hectare, ten times more than oil palm plantations.”

Indonesia is the world’s top producer of palm oil used for cooking, cosmetics, jet fuel and industry.  The archipelago has 17.3 million hectares of plantations.

The total size of Java, the most heavily populated island in the archipelago, is 13.2 million hectares.

Millions of square kilometres of the country’s richly diverse jungles have been cleared in recent decades. Sumatra has lost 80% of its forest cover, and Kalimantan about 50%.  Your correspondent has travelled vast distances of horizon-to-horizon monoculture in East Kalimantan.

By December, Indonesian exports will be hit by the European Union’s anti-deforestation regulations if endorsed by the European Council.

Prabowo’s comments can be seen as an attempt to arouse local hostilities to the new law that “requires companies to demonstrate their products aren’t sourced to deforested land or land with forest degradation”.

In 2019, President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo issued a permanent moratorium on forest clearance for palm plantations and logging.  It had little effect.

In 2023, it was reported that 30,000 hectares of pristine jungle had been bulldozed and burned for plantations, up from 22,000 hectares the previous year. Smoke pollution has infuriated nearby Malaysia and Singapore.

It’s not just the greenies getting stressed – investors with consciences are also turning twitchy. One international group claimed forest cover loss “significantly impacts the environment, biodiversity, and local communities. Deforestation leads to soil erosion (and) fertility”.

“The country is home to many endangered species, such as orangutans, tigers, and elephants. The loss of forests and habitat destruction threaten these species’ survival.

“(Clearing) also affects the livelihoods of local communities that rely on forests for food, medicine, and income.” In 2018, the Indonesian Ombudsman received more than 1000 complaints from communities, including indigenous people, against palm oil companies.

Felling threatens 193 species listed by the Switzerland-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature. These widely reported concerns appear to have ricochetted off Prabowo and left his plans to clear, grow and export largely unharmed, apart from sniping by NGOs.

Uli Arta Siagian from Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia  (Indonesian Forum for the Environment), founded in 1980, told the Straits Times that “the police and military in Indonesia had tended to side with palm oil companies embroiled in conflict with the local communities, and often used intimidation and violence against them”.

“What’s surprising is that the statement of palm oil not causing deforestation because it has leaves, was made by the president, who should have spoken based on science, knowledge, research and facts.”

But when you run the world’s fourth-largest nation and your devious reasoning gets reported by a largely supine media, why bother referencing sources?

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