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Sustainable forests, agriculture need stronger international partnership
SVLK Indonesia has successfully enabled efforts to combat illegal logging and also to decrease deforestation rate since its launch.
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Two bulldozers and logs of various varieties and sizes are seized by investigators with the Environment and Forestry Ministry's law enforcement division in an illegal logging case in Sabuai village, Eastern Seram regency, Maluku. (Handout/Environment and Forestry Ministry)
W
ith the third-largest rainforest in the world, Indonesia aims to reach a net sink zero of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2030 from the forest and other land-use (FOLU) sectors. The government has put FOLU as its priority in reducing emissions by 24.1 percent – equivalent to 692 million tons of CO2e as the target for the conditional nationally determined contributions (NDC) scenario (conditional; CM2), followed by the energy sector of 15.5 percent or 446 million tons of CO2e.
The recently issued Environment and Forestry Ministerial Decree No. 168/2022 establishes the FOLU Net Sink Operational Plan. The FOLU sector will become a net sink in 2030. Furthermore, establishing net sinks in the forestry and land sectors must be synergized with the agricultural sector and other land-based sectors to obtain success. With FOLU accounting for 58 percent of our total national commitment by 2030, it will be a challenging task.
As the first country who signed the timber Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union, Indonesia has been chosen to lead producing countries as the cochair of the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogue. Indonesia has agreed to promote sustainable development and trade while protecting forests and other critical ecosystems.
This selection was based on Indonesia’s Forest Legality and Sustainability Assurance System (SVLK). SVLK was launched in 2009, then renamed SVLK Indonesia at the United Nations climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021 to better reflect and emphasize the system's inherent values and our commitment to sustainable practices.
Through relentless collaborations and coordination, Indonesia issued its first-ever Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT)-licensed product under the SVLK scheme to the European market in 2016, being the first country under the VPA in the world to achieve such a milestone.
SVLK Indonesia has successfully enabled efforts to combat illegal logging and also to decrease deforestation rate since its launch. These works brought all stakeholders on the same boat to adopt Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) principles optimally.
To combat illegal logging and illegal trade, the Environment and Forestry Ministry applies two different approaches, namely a soft approach through SVLK and a hard approach through forest prevention, and security operations that are conducted by the Environmental and Forestry Law Enforcement Directorate General.
