Enough said: Greenpeace activists wearing masks of US President Barack Obama and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono perform during a rally in Jakarta. The activists supported Saturday Yudhoyono's promise to cutting carbon emission. -- JP/P.J. Leo
Hundreds of Greenpeace forest campaigners took to streets in Jakarta on Saturday to give a moral boost to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s pledge to slash emissions from forest and peat land clearing, to help fight climate change.
The activists called on Yudhoyono to turn his commitment into actions in the field to end deforestation in Indonesia.
“If we continue with ‘business as usual’, Yudhoyono’s promises on emissions cuts will be meaningless as the deforestation will continue,” Greenpeace Southeast Asia forest campaigner Asia Yuyun Indradi told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
“We come to offer support for President Yudhoyono to meet his target on emissions cuts. The President has shown his true political leadership through his commitment to reducing emissions.”
During their rally outside the National Monument in Central Jakarta, 150 Greenpeace campaigners from Surabaya, Semarang, Bandung and Jakarta unfurled a banner that read, “Stop talking, start acting to save forests for our future”.
The rally followed the recent establishment of a Greenpeace Climate Defender Camp in Semenanjung Kampar, Riau, set up to protest the exploitation of peat land forests, which activists say store around 2 gigatons of greenhouse gases.
Palalawan Police dismantled the camp and deported Greenpeace’s foreign activists and foreign journalists covering the event.
Asked about actions needed to end deforestation, Yuyun said Yudhoyono should first revoke policies detrimental to forest protection.
The Forestry Ministry under former minister Malam Sambat Kaban in 2009 issued a ministerial decree on natural forests that allows Indonesia’s pulp and paper firms to extend the use of natural forests until 2014, from previously 2009.
To exacerbate deforestation, the Agriculture Ministry issued a regulation allowing the clearing of peat forests for agricultural use, including the palm oil industry.
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