Indonesia’s dying timber concessions, invaded by oil palms, top deforestation table

JAKARTA — The rate of deforestation in selective-logging concessions in parts of Indonesia has unexpectedly overtaken those of pulpwood and oil palm concessions, a new study shows. A study by the NGO Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI) in the provinces of North Sumatra, East Kalimantan and North Maluku showed a combined loss of 7,180 square kilometers (2,770 square miles) of these forests between 2013 and 2016. Seventy-two percent of that deforestation occurred in areas under one of four types of concessions: selective logging (for timber); pulpwood (typically acacia, to make paper); oil palm; and mining. Selective logging, which the researchers believed to be a declining industry relative to the booming oil palm and pulpwood industries, experienced the highest rate of deforestation over the study period, losing 838 square kilometers (323 square miles) of natural forest. This was followed closely by mining concessions (833 square kilometers), palm oil concessions (760 square kilometers) and pulpwood concessions (370 square kilometers). “We considered the selective-logging industry to be comatose … largely replaced by acacia plantations and then oil palm plantations,” FWI campaigner Agung Ady Setiawan told Mongabay. But the study, he said, showed otherwise — and the culprit was the latter industry. Selective-logging concessions, known by the Indonesian acronym HPH (Hak Pengusahaan Hutan), are the backbone of Indonesia’s historically important timber industry. But that industry has been on a steady decline due to competition from other countries across Southeast Asia and an export ban on unprocessed logs imposed by the government since 1985. (The ban was…

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