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resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo recently took his strongest action yet to tackle one of the biggest problems that has been plaguing the country: unsustainable palm oil.

Among the most pressing problems in the palm oil sector is a lack of good governance, marked by the illegal expansion of palm plantations into forest areas, irrespective of whether they are conservation or protected areas, including national parks such as Tesso Nilo in Riau and Sebangau in Central Kalimantan.

The plantations are deforesting and destroying habitats and ecosystems and are directly responsible for the rapid demise of Indonesia’s most iconic species of elephant, orangutan, rhino and tiger. These excesses have caused widespread condemnation of palm oil in many markets of a world that now more than ever is sensitive to the effects of climate change and other environmental impacts. A trend to label food products as being palm oil-free is spreading widely to increase their marketability.

Rather than continuing to rely on promotional campaigns and threats to promote Indonesian palm oil and tackle the oil’s image issue with PR, as has been the industry’s business as usual, this time, the President has done the right thing by tackling the core problem — weak governance — head on.

Unable to keep up with the breakneck speed of palm oil expansion that has grown five times in size since 2000, the President’s moratorium on the issuance of new permits and the freezing of under-process permit applications has now given the government a golden opportunity to reform the industry.

Registering small holders, mapping and identifying permits that have been issued and taking a serious stab at fixing the problem of not being able to differentiate legal from illegal palm oil fruits are all steps in the right direction to reduce growers’ incentives for risk-free illegal expansion of palm plantations into protected areas.

This presidential instruction is also addressing another of Indonesia’s major palm oil problems: the embarrassing low average productivity of the country’s oil palm plantations, which stands at roughly half of that of our neighbor, Malaysia, and a third or even a fourth of the best managed plantations in the world.

This vertical expansion of production will increase livelihoods while avoiding the controversial issue of deforestation caused by horizontal expansion.

Jokowi first announced the moratorium in the wake of a 2015 fire and haze crisis that pumped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The underlying cause of the disaster was a large-scale drainage of vast peat lands, mainly by huge plantations, such as oil palm and acacia plantations, to feed global markets.

Three years after the hazardous haze, 2018 sees a new dawn for a timely and urgently needed improvement in the management of the palm oil industry.

The instruction also refers to another important tool, namely the one-map policy, which has been dormant. The policy is acknowledged by many stakeholders as an important step to finding a solution to the problem of overlapping permits among the many sectors that have plagued Indonesia’s natural resource management. It was highlighted as part of what will be completed during the moratorium.

The instructions to relevant government institutions to accelerate the registration of all existing oil palm plantations, both big and small, and then determine whether they are in forest or other areas that are illegal for palm oil development are crucial for successful law enforcement and settling the big issue of legality.

Thus, the presidential instruction’s recognition of the need to protect high conservation value forest is the right move to align Indonesia with standard practices of major world markets. It will ensure that Indonesian palm oil is aligned with global market requirements and provide a foundation for Indonesia’s competitiveness at a time when palm oil production is dramatically increasing around the world.

This is also a good opportunity to strengthen the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil certification by adopting high conservation values and avoiding deforestation to ensure that it is seen as a world-class certification standard that is accepted in all markets.

However, we need to remember though that presidential instructions to sort out overlapping permits and issue moratoria have had mixed results before.

To make this presidential instruction work, the instructed institutions, especially those at the provincial and district levels that are often the most reluctant of all, need to show a strong commitment to tackle these issues. It will take full support from all stakeholders to implement the presidential instruction and ensure that palm oil can become a responsible Indonesian product wanted by the world.
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