News — Page 11

The Copenhagen climate summit — formally COP15, held in December 2009 — was a pivotal moment in international climate negotiations that had profound consequences for forest conservation. Going into Copenhagen, there was significant optimism that world leaders would agree to a legally binding successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, one that would include strong provisions for REDD+ and climate finance.

While the Copenhagen Accord that emerged fell short of the legally binding agreement many had hoped for, it did include important commitments on forest conservation. Developed countries pledged to provide fast-start financing of 30 billion dollars between 2010 and 2012, with a significant portion earmarked for forests. Several major bilateral forest deals — including the Norway-Indonesia agreement — were announced in the months surrounding Copenhagen.

The US pledge of 275 million dollars to rainforest conservation in November 2009, just weeks before Copenhagen, was part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to demonstrate commitment to international climate cooperation and to support the inclusion of tropical forest provisions in US climate legislation then moving through Congress.

Despite the mixed political outcome, Copenhagen accelerated momentum on forest conservation in several important ways. It focused international attention on the role of tropical forests in the climate system, galvanised bilateral forest finance commitments, and set the stage for the more comprehensive REDD+ framework that would be adopted at Cancun the following year.

Indonesia is home to the third largest area of tropical rainforest in the world, after the Amazon and the Congo Basin. These forests, spread across more than 17,000 islands, store immense quantities of carbon in both their vegetation and in the extensive peatland soils found across Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua. When these peatlands are drained and burned for agricultural conversion, they release centuries of stored carbon in a matter of days.

Indonesia has historically had one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. At its peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Indonesia was losing forest cover at a rate of more than two million hectares per year. This placed it among the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters, despite being a developing country with a relatively modest economy compared to the major industrialised nations.

The country's forests also harbour extraordinary biodiversity, including critically endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger, orangutan, and pygmy elephant. The intersection of high biodiversity value, massive carbon stocks, and rapid deforestation makes Indonesia a frontline battleground for global conservation efforts.

Indonesia's engagement with REDD+ — including its landmark bilateral deal with Norway — has made it a test case for whether the mechanism can deliver results in conditions of complex governance, competing economic interests, and vast forest landscapes. The lessons learned from Indonesia's experience are closely studied by other forest nations and by the international community as they refine global forest policy.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the primary UN body responsible for monitoring global forest resources. Through its Global Forest Resources Assessment, published every five years since 1948, the FAO compiles data from national forest inventories and remote sensing analyses to produce the most comprehensive overview of the world's forests available to policymakers and researchers.

The FAO's assessments track changes in forest area, growing stock, carbon stocks, biodiversity, and the livelihoods of forest-dependent people. They provide the baseline data against which countries measure their progress on forest conservation commitments and against which international pledges — such as the goal of halting deforestation — are evaluated.

Beyond data collection, the FAO provides technical assistance to countries developing national forest monitoring systems, supports the development of sustainable forest management standards, and coordinates international initiatives on forest law enforcement and governance. Its National Forest Monitoring programme has helped dozens of developing countries build the institutional and technical capacity needed for REDD+ implementation.

When the FAO issues calls for greater effort to save the world's forests, as it did repeatedly in the early 2010s, these warnings carry significant weight in international policy discussions. The organisation's unique position as both a data authority and a technical assistance provider gives it a distinctive voice in advocating for stronger international action on forest conservation.

The science of quantifying carbon in forest ecosystems has advanced enormously since the early years of climate negotiations, driven by improvements in satellite technology, ground-based measurement methods, and computational tools. In the early 2000s, estimates of forest carbon stocks carried large uncertainties that complicated their use in international accounting frameworks. Today, remote sensing combined with plot-based inventory data can produce estimates with substantially reduced uncertainty margins.

Airborne and spaceborne LiDAR instruments have been particularly transformative, enabling three-dimensional measurement of forest structure over large areas. This technology can estimate canopy height and biomass across entire landscapes, filling in the gaps between ground-based plot measurements that traditional inventory methods relied upon. The NASA GEDI instrument, launched in 2018, provides global LiDAR coverage of tropical and temperate forests.

Carbon flux measurements — tracking how forests absorb carbon from the atmosphere and how much they release through respiration, decomposition, and disturbance — have also improved substantially. Networks of eddy covariance towers measure the net carbon exchange of forests continuously, revealing how this varies with climate, seasons, and disturbance history. This understanding is critical for assessing whether forests are net carbon sources or sinks under changing climate conditions.

The synthesis of global carbon stock data into benchmark maps, such as the landmark study published in PNAS in 2011 covering 2.5 billion hectares of tropical forest, provided unprecedented spatial detail on where carbon is stored and at risk. These maps are now routinely used by governments, conservation organisations, and carbon market developers to prioritise conservation investments and assess the carbon value of REDD+ projects.

Palm oil is the world's most widely produced vegetable oil, found in roughly half of all packaged products sold in supermarkets, as well as in biodiesel fuels, cosmetics, and animal feed. Its production has expanded dramatically over the past three decades, with Malaysia and Indonesia together accounting for approximately 85 percent of global output. This expansion has been a major driver of tropical deforestation and peatland destruction.

The conversion of tropical forests and peatlands to oil palm plantations releases massive quantities of stored carbon. Peatland conversion is particularly damaging because peat soils can hold carbon accumulated over thousands of years; when drained and exposed to air or fire, this carbon is oxidised and released rapidly. Fires set to clear land for oil palm have repeatedly caused regional air quality crises across Southeast Asia.

The industry has long resisted characterisation as a primary driver of deforestation, pointing to the role of smallholder farmers and government land allocation decisions. However, research and satellite data have consistently linked plantation expansion — including that of major corporate producers — to primary forest loss in Indonesia, Malaysia, and increasingly in other tropical countries.

Efforts to address the problem have included certification schemes such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), corporate "no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation" commitments, and consumer market campaigns targeting major brands. The World Bank's engagement framework for the sector, developed through multi-stakeholder consultations in 2010, attempted to establish principles for responsible investment that could reduce the industry's environmental footprint while supporting rural development objectives.