Dokumen Indonesia:
Keeping Papua Forests from Palm Oil Expansion
Papua and West Papua include provinces with forest cover in the widest oil palm plantations in Indonesia.
The molarity of palm oil provides an opportunity to evaluate licensing to restore the function of protected forest areas. In a case study of West Papua, this oil palm licensing evaluation has the opportunity to support the target of the Manokwari Declaration in order to realize a protected forest area of 70 percent of the total area. At this time, the area of protected forests and conservation of West Papua reached 34.8 percent of the total area. With licensing evaluations, the area of protected forests can be increased to 62 percent.
Forests in the Land of Papua are important to be saved from oil palm expansion. This is because Papua and West Papua include provinces that have forest cover in the widest oil palm plantations in Indonesia. In Papua, there are 1.3 million hectares and West Papua has 404 thousand hectares of forest cover in oil palm plantations.
On the other hand, oil palm plantation permits have increased rapidly. In 2015, there were only 5 oil palm plantation business licenses in the Land of Papua. But in 2017 it jumped to 114 business licenses. Thus, the moratorium of palm oil can actually withstand the rate of granting such permits and save forest areas.
This research is the result of the cooperation of the Sustainable Madani and Katadata Insight
