HANS NICHOLAS JONG 9 JAN 2025 ASIA

• Indonesia’s forestry minister says 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of forest can be converted to grow food and biofuel crops, or an area twice the size of South Korea.
• Experts have expressed alarm over the plan, citing the potential for massive greenhouse gas emissions and loss of biodiversity.
• They also say mitigating measures that the minister has promised, such as the use of agroforestry and the involvement of local communities, will have limited impact in such a large-scale scheme.
• The announcement coincides with the Indonesian president’s call for an expansion of the country’s oil palm plantations, claiming it won’t result in deforestation because oil palms are also trees.

JAKARTA — An Indonesian government plan to clear forests spanning an area twice the size of South Korea for food and biofuel crops has sparked fears of massive greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss.

The country’s forestry minister, Raja Juli Antoni, announced on Dec. 30, 2024, that his office had identified forest areas spanning 20 million hectares (50 million acres) for potential conversion into “food and energy estates.”

The announcement triggered an immediate backlash, as similar food estate programs in the past have failed, often leaving a legacy of environmental destruction. Indonesia has the world’s third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest, after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and such a vast amount of deforestation would deal a major blow to global efforts of limiting global warming, said Amalya Reza Oktaviani, bioenergy campaign manager at the NGO Trend Asia.

The clearing of 20 million hectares of forests could release up to 22 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual emissions from nearly 5,300 coal-fired power plants.

“This [food and energy estate plan] shows how the government doesn’t have a commitment to reforest and rehabilitate natural forests,” Amalya said. “In reality, we don’t have the luxury of deforesting amid the climate crisis.”

Yet the plan aligns with the platform of President Prabowo Subianto, who has prioritized achieving both food and energy self-sufficiency as cornerstones of his administration. Since his election campaign in late 2023 and early 2024, Prabowo has emphasized the need for Indonesia to achieve sovereignty in these critical sectors to bolster economic resilience and national security.

Over decades, unbridled agricultural expansion has already destroyed vast swaths of Indonesia’s rainforests, turning the country into a significant global emitter of greenhouse gases. From 2013 to 2022, Indonesia ranked as the world’s second-largest emitter from land-use change, contributing 20% of global land-use emissions.

Agroforestry claims

In response to criticism, Forestry Minister Raja said the government would minimize deforestation by implementing agroforestry, a system where crop cultivation is interspersed among trees. Potential crops include rice and sugar palms, which, Raja said, would allow for sustainable food production.

“By planting various trees [together with food and energy crops], our forests can provide food self-sufficiency through a very sustainable system,” he said at his office in Jakarta on Jan. 6.

Studies suggest agroforestry can help maintain tree cover and wildlife habitats; examples from places like Brazil suggest it can improve farmer livelihood and slow down forest loss. Agroforestry can also help maintain tree cover and wildlife habitat, particularly in regions where agriculture is a major driver of deforestation.

However, critics say that at the scale that the Indonesian government wants to expand its crop estate, agroforestry alone will be insufficient to prevent large-scale deforestation. Agroforestry only works if forest cover is retained, according to Herry Purnomo, a senior scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). If forests are cleared for crops, then even under an agroforestry system this loss of intact forests would contribute to biodiversity loss and emissions, he said.

“My hope is that intact forests are not cut down and replaced with rice fields,” Herry, who is also a professor at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), told Mongabay.

Secondary forests ‘not expendable’

A key uncertainty remains about the Ministry of Forestry’s plan: where are the 20 million hectares of forest it’s targeting for the food and biofuel crops?

The ministry has indicated it will prioritize abandoned or idle forestry concessions, known by the Indonesian acronym PBPH. These include selective logging concessions that the ministry says no longer contain primary forest.

Ade Tri Ajikusumah, head of the ministry’s planning department, said approximately 20 million hectares of Indonesia’s 37 million hectares (91 million acres) of forestry concessions are inactive.

“That’s what we use for agroforestry, so there’s no land clearing,” he told Mongabay.

Since these concessions have already been logged in the past, they no longer contain old-growth, or primary, forest, defined as forests that haven’t been damaged by human activity and thus are some of the densest and most ecologically significant forests on Earth, Ade said.

However, critics contend that even idle concessions can still contain significant forest cover. Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaigner Sekar Banjaran Aji pointed out that there were still 18.9 million hectares (47 million acres) of natural forests within forestry concessions, including selective logging and industrial forest concessions, as of 2022.

“Nearly 20 million hectares of forestry concessions are still forested, which means there’s a high risk of deforestation” if those areas are then converted for the food and energy estates, she told Mongabay.

Selective logging concessions in particular typically have higher forest cover because companies only harvest timber from certain commercially valuable trees above a certain size, leaving much of the forest structure relatively undisturbed and allowing the logged forest to regenerate over time.

Ade said that even if the idle concessions are still forested, they’re likely to be forests that were previously logged and thus have been degraded, also known as secondary forest.

But not all secondary forests are heavily degraded, said Timer Manurung, director of Indonesian environmental NGO Auriga Nusantara. Many are still in good condition, with high carbon stock, lots of biodiversity, and still providing invaluable environmental services, he said.

“Secondary forests often have higher biodiversity than primary forests,” Timer told Mongabay. “Species like tigers, elephants and orangutans are abundant in these areas. The idea that secondary forests are expendable is a fatal misconception.”

Timer called on the government to protect all natural forests, including secondary forests within concessions, rather than differentiating them based on degradation status. He also called on the government to make it clear what criteria it uses to determine whether a concession is idle.

What crops?

Another question is what crops will be planted for the food and energy estates.

So far Raja has only mentioned rice and sugar palms as potential crops. Trend Asia’s Amalya said another likely candidate is oil palm, given that Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Past food estate programs also ended up planting oil palms, even though they were initially planned for rice, Amalya said.

Furthermore, Indonesia’s energy policy also promotes bioenergy, which focuses on palm oil-based biodiesel. Currently the country already uses the world’s highest proportion of palm oil in its biodiesel, and Prabowo has a plan to increase the blend with conventional diesel to 50%, known as B50, as early as this year.

But to produce enough palm oil to meet the B50 program need alone, the total planted area of oil palms will need to expand by up to three times the current size, which already covers 16 million hectares (40 million acres).

The potential inclusion of palm oil in the food and energy estate program has raised concerns among environmentalists, as oil palm plantations have historically been a significant driver of deforestation in the country. Over the past 20 years, these plantations accounted for one-third of Indonesia’s loss of old-growth forest — an area of 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres), or half the size of Belgium.

These concerns have been inflamed by recent comments from President Prabowo, who suggested that deforestation for palm oil expansion isn’t environmentally destructive.

“And I think in the future, we also need to plant more palm oil. We don’t need to be afraid of endangering — what’s it called — deforestation, right?” he said.

“Oil palms are trees, right? They have leaves, right?” he went on.

The expansion of palm oil for energy could spell disaster for Indonesia’s forests and contradict the country’s energy transition agenda to reduce emissions, Amalya said.

“The emissions from forest clearing, combined with those from burning palm oil for biofuel in transportation and biomass in power generation, will worsen the climate crisis,” she said. “In the energy sector, the government needs to revisit bioenergy policies, particularly those involving palm oil and wood-based feedstocks.”

Conflict risk

Besides deforestation risk, the plan to establish 20 million hectares of food and energy estates also poses a high risk of agrarian conflicts with local and Indigenous communities, Timer said.

The idle concessions identified by the Ministry of Forestry are likely to overlap with villages and areas already managed by communities, he said. “This will create conflicts with local communities.”

Amalya stressed the importance of completing forest boundary delineation to avoid such conflicts. As of December 2022, only 89% of Indonesia’s forest areas had been formally delineated. Without clear boundaries, the food and energy estate program could encroach on community lands or protected areas, Amalya said. As such, large-scale projects like this shouldn’t proceed until forest boundaries are fully delineated, she added.

Ade, whose department is in charge of the delineating process, acknowledged that delineation is a priority, adding that the physical mapping process is complete, with legal recognition pending.

Community involvement

Besides finishing the delineating process, the Ministry of Forestry will also include Indigenous and local communities in the food and energy estate plan through agroforestry to respect their rights, Ade said.

“We also need to collaborate with people through agroforestry and social forestry program [in establishing the food and energy estates],” he said.

Herry of CIFOR welcomed the inclusion of communities but questioned the feasibility at such a large scale.

“If the size [of the estates] is big, then the actors [involved] must be big as well,” Herry said. “How can communities manage 10,000 hectares [25,000 acres of land]? The ones who can manage 10,000 hectares are medium to large [corporations],” he said. This raises the risk of the government handing over management of these lands from communities to corporations, but Herry said the government has a duty to work with communities to build their capacity.

He and other experts agree that while agroforestry and community involvement are steps in the right direction, without robust safeguards, including transparency, the protection of all natural forests, clear boundary delineation and meaningful community participation, the program is bound to fail, much like previous food estate programs in Indonesia.

Alternative to crop expansion

In the mid-1990s, the government initiated a food estate project that sought to establish 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of rice plantations on peatlands across the Bornean province of Central Kalimantan to boost food security.

The project failed spectacularly, leaving behind a dried-out wasteland that burns on a large scale almost every year. Subsequent attempts to replicate the project in other regions, like the easternmost region of Papua, also ended in failure.

Given such high risks and a record of failures, parliament has urged the Ministry of Forestry to proceed carefully.

“The forestry minister should be cautious and not rush in making decisions. Do in-depth studies [first], invite academics and civil society in making a comprehensive plan where development is in line with forest conservation,” said Ahmad Yohan, a deputy head of the parliamentary commission that oversees environmental and agricultural issues. “Even if it’s for food and energy security, don’t sacrifice the forest.”

If the risks are too high, he said, the government should go back to the drawing board and seek other means of achieving food security without establishing new agricultural fields and clearing forests in the process.

For instance, the government could work with experts to increase the yield of existing agricultural fields through technology, Ahmad said. It could also improve farmers’ access to fertilizer, provide them with training, and modernize their agricultural equipment, he said.

“This way, achieving food security and self-sufficiency doesn’t require destroying forests to establish new plantations,” Ahmad said. “We can maximize the use of existing lands, improve the irrigation systems and the technology.”

Banner image: Forest near Rabia on the island of Waigeo in Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia. Image by Rhett Ayers Butler/Mongabay.