3X The Money, Far Lower Goals And Indonesia Still Can't Even Approach Reforestation Targets

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The government classifies the condition of land throughout Indonesia on a three-point scale: prime, degraded, and critical. It’s this latter category that’s been prioritized for reforestation, and it includes areas damaged by the rapid expansion of mines and plantations, as well as illegal logging and encroachment.

In 2013, the Yudhoyono administration had calculated the extent of critical land across the country at 243,000 square kilometers (94,000 square miles) — an area the size of the United Kingdom — and that was the number to hit by 2030 for the Widodo administration when it took over in 2014. The reforestation achieved since then, however, has been negligible. Less than 1,000 square kilometers (390 square miles) of critical land was rehabilitated by the government between 2015 and 2018, according to figures from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry — less than half of a percentage point of the target.

If land rehabilitated through other means, such as mangrove planting and reforestation by private-sector concession holders, is taken into account, then the figure goes up to nearly 7,900 square kilometers (3,050 square miles). “If we look only at the size of critical lands that have been rehabilitated, then each year the government has only managed to restore 200 square kilometers [77 square miles] on average,” says Bejo Untung, a program manager at the Center for Regional Information and Studies (PATTIRO), an NGO that keeps track of state and local spending. Even Widodo seemed baffled by the glacial pace of reforestation, and chided his subordinates over it at the end of 2017. “Year after year we exhaust our budget [to plant trees], but where are the trees? Can anyone show them to me?” he said during a tree-planting ceremony in central Java.

With the reforestation target so far out of reach, the government decided in 2018 that it was aiming too high. So it slashed its estimate of critical land to 140,100 square kilometers (54,100 square miles), or about the size of England. (It will still take 48 years to rehabilitate even this smaller area at the current pace of progress, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry says.)

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https://news.mongabay.com/2019/01/funds-tripled-and-target-slashed-but-indonesia-still-off-pace-for-reforestation/