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em>Issues of climate change and the conservation of tropical forests have played increasingly important roles in political decision making in Indonesia lately. With talk of carbon trade and carbon markets looming in global negotiations, what role does Indonesia — as a developing economy and home to one of the largest areas of tropical forests — have to play, and what can non-governmental organizations do to bridge the gap between high-ranking talks and regional and practical policies? The Jakarta Post’s Dina Indrasafitri spoke with The Nature Conservancy’s European representative and executive director Sascha Müller-Kraenner about this.

Question: What is TNC doing to address the issue of forest preservation in Indonesia?

Answer: TNC has a project in the Berau district that is the biggest of its kind worldwide. There have been a number of smaller, simpler pilot projects there such as taking an area of normal pristine forest, putting it under [government] protection or by taking up a timber concession and talking with one timber company.

Does the fact that Indonesia is perceived as corrupt contribute to increasing concerns about transparency in funding climate projects here?

There are contradicting views. On the politics side Indonesia is seen as an important country both politically in the region and also for forest protection. Tropical forest protection can only work if three big countries — Brazil, Congo and Indonesia — participate. So there are a lot of reasons why Indonesia is especially important compared to other countries that are smaller and carry less political weight.

And Indonesia is a democracy, which is a big advantage. It played a very positive role in negotiations in general in the forest area in particular, and has set up a climate policy target at an early stage that is quite ambitious, but it fixed certain targets.

Regardless on how realistic it is or whether there is some strategy behind it, people appreciate the political signal.

But there are a number of questions about transparency and accountability. The question about transparency is that it is not always clear who’s in charge of what.

In the forest area there are several government agencies: The Forestry Ministry, Bappenas [the National Development Planning Agency]; the Foreign Ministry also sometimes plays a role when it comes to international negotiations.

The second problem is accountability. There is a history of corruption, which in the past has always prevented development projects from achieving their objectives. A lot of donor countries in the last year of the 1990s and in the early years of this century became reluctant to support work in Indonesia. More recently they become more positive, but there’s still a lot of questions.

How has TNC managed to convince timber companies to carry out sustainable practices and what are the challenges?

We help timber companies set up their timber management plan and teach them techniques so that they are aware of the environmental checklist and what to do. But sometimes it is also a matter of additional costs and timber markets, and an international REDD mechanism can provide for that. For example, the French government is now willing to provide loans directly to timber concessions for their transformation into a more sustainable business model in Berau, to help them with the transition phase.

In the long term, forestry should be more practical for the simple reason that forests can regrow better when you don’t have the random destruction that happens when machines run through forests. A functional forest is the biggest asset the timber companies have.

From Europe there are currently three countries that have expressed interests. The French government expressed an interest in providing loans to timber concessions; Germany is working on an agreement with the Indonesian government to support three REDD pilot project over Indonesia and one of them will be Berau, which includes timber concessions and also protection forests. One country from Europe that is already giving support to work in Berau is Norway.

The Berau project is only in the planning stage. The idea is to launch it this year with the cooperation of the district and have it run for a five-year period, after which a self-reliant sustainable system of forest governance for the district should have been created.

Will this project provide Indonesia a place in the carbon market?

Well, there is no carbon trade market yet. But I think it is realistic to assume there will be a global carbon market in some years’ time and so pilot facilities prepare countries to participate actively and practically in such a market. Right now there is one functioning carbon market in the world which is the European Emissions Trading system and the European Union has declared that their objective is to link the European market with other markets in other countries that would first and foremost include countries like the US or Japan when they decide to include carbon markets.