Palm oil reform was left in limbo after the moratorium lapsed on Sept. 19, exactly three years after its inception through Presidential Instruction (Inpres) No. 8/2018. The moratorium was aimed at improving palm oil governance and responding to concerns about deforestation caused by oil palm plantations near or inside forest areas, and labor exploitation. The moratorium required government agencies to stop granting new licenses for palm oil concessions and to review existing ones every three years.

The government had yet to extend it despite calls for such an extension from environmentalists. Officials said in September that the moratorium was no longer relevant as the jobs law, enacted in late 2020, and its implementing regulations set new mechanisms more or less similar to the moratorium.

These included fines and revocation of permits for oil palm plantations that were opened inside forest areas before the moratorium was in place, whether unintentionally cultivated or not. Meanwhile, plantations inside forest areas that violated the moratorium will be taken over by the government and restored as forest. This is expected to settle overlaps between palm oil concessions and forest areas.

But environmentalists say that without a strict moratorium, the regulations could whitewash oil palm plantations found in forest areas that were planted before or during the moratorium.

Read also: Jobs law may replace expired oil palm moratorium, official says

Palm oil is one of Indonesia’s biggest export commodities contributing a large share of the country’s foreign reserves.