Comment: REDD forests have ‘unclear’ borders

Oct. 12, p. 4: A report by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) revealed that less than 5 percent of forests in five provinces nominated to implement a climate partnership with Norway have legally defined borders. The five provinces —  Riau, Jambi, Central Kalimantan, East Kalimantan and Papua — are proposed sites for a REDD pilot project. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is scheduled to choose one among the five to host the pilot project this month. Central Kalimantan has 15 million hectares of forest; East Kalimantan, 14 million hectares; Papua, 40 million hectares; Riau, 9 million hectares; and Jambi, 2.17 million hectares.  

Your comments:

Apart from unclear and unresolved forest borders that may hamper the implementation of REDD in Indonesia, there are few things that need to be sorted out in order to make the REDD scheme successful.
First is the completion of provincial and district spatial planning revisions to establish clear forest and non-forest boundaries and certainty on land-use allocations.
Second, it is urgent to develop a national carbon accounting system that can provide accurate information on, for example, the total amount of forest area by type, the estimated carbon content of each forest type, the estimated amount of carbon released by each forest type and the estimated amount of carbon sequestrated.
Third is to develop and set up the measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) architecture, both at the policy and ground levels, and implement a trial program to implement the architecture.
Fourth is to develop and implement capacity building for MRV aspects both at the national and
subnational levels to reduce our dependency on international expertise, which has burdensome transaction costs.
Anyway, without ample preparedness on policy and technical measures from our own side, there will be unlikely positive benefits that this country can reap from the REDD scheme.
Alue Dohong
Palangka Raya

As long as REDD is considered an incentive scheme for the forest carbon market rather than a tool to improve forest governance, then we can forget about better governance and institutional capacity for managing our forest resources.
Let’s start to change our ways to reduce useless expectations at the sub national level.
Treat REDD as a vehicle to improve forest governance infrastructures. Then we’ll see.
Alfan Subekti
Balikpapan