Indonesia Rebukes Greenpeace On Eve of Cancun Talks

Indonesia has delivered a rebuke to Greenpeace on the eve of the United Nations climate change conference in Mexico.

Indonesian Government officials publicly criticized the claims and data in a Greenpeace report that claims aid money will be misused by the Indonesian Government. They also rejected Greenpeace's call for 'zero deforestation' in Indonesia.

Greenpeace issued the report in the week prior to the Cancun talks. The report is an attempt to lobby for tighter conditions on the bilateral forest deal between Indonesia and Norway. Greenpeace - like many other NGOs - is lobbying for no money to contribute to improved practices in the private sector against financial contributions towards improved private sector practices.

Indonesia criticized Greenpeace for its claim that the Forestry Ministry was to allocate 63 million ha of forest area to the agriculture, forestry and mining sectors for use as production forests or for conversion to plantation forests.

Indonesian officials said that the true figure area is less than half that - and that the figure Greenpeace presented had been ‘made up.’ Researchers from CIFOR have also stated that Greenpeace had 'overstated' the numbers.

The Indonesian Government has conceded that 24 million ha of forest land will be either used for forestry or converted to other uses. This is a complete rejection of Greenpeace's 'zero deforestation' push.

The criticisms of the Greenpeace data follow a string of domestic criticism over data use in Indonesia that has - unsurprisingly - not been covered in Western media.

Late last month, former Indonesian House speaker Amien Rais called for Greenpeace to be publicly investigated after their claims about regarding the forestry, and pulp and paper sector were found to be incorrect.

In November, Greenpeace's data was heavily criticized by researchers at the Bogor Agricultural Institute.

Protesters from the group Solidaritas Untuk Nusantara burnt the Dutch flag and publicly protested Greenpeace's presence in Indonesia.

Its Greenpeace's latest report, which specifically criticizes the Indonesian Forest Ministry, contains a large number of contentions that could be challenged from a factual or development perspective.

Increasing food production – The report criticizes Indonesia for an expressed desire to increase food production for domestic consumption and exports. In Indonesia the percentage of children under the age of 5 that are underweight or have stunted growth is 20 per cent and 40 per cent respectively. In the Netherlands - where the Greenpeace report was produced - these percentages are so negligible that they do not register in World Bank data.

Harvested wood products – The Greenpeace report assumes - as does the UNFCCC - that all timber is oxidized in its year of removal. While this adheres to UNFCCC accounting rules, it has no basis in fact. Timber-based products, such as lumber and paper products, store carbon. In landfill very little if any carbon makes its way into the atmosphere. The US Environmental Protection Authority has stated that harvested wood products make up for more than 12 per cent of all carbon pools in the US.

Plantations and ecosystem services – The Greenpeace report contends that forest plantations perform no environmental functions. Yet the most recent research on orang-utans in Borneo has demonstrated that viable populations of orang-utans live within acacia plantations. Additionally, planted forests are often used for environmental protection purposes including such as watershed protection.

Energy – The report criticizes the development of both biofuels and coal in Indonesia. Greenpeace has also lobbied against nuclear plants in the country. The equatorial position of the Indonesian archipelago means that it has low winds rendering wind power unviable. Furthermore, the cost of solar on a large scale is prohibitive in developing countries. Biomass and geothermal projects are prospective, but they are not mentioned in the report, and obviously fuelwood is out of the question in Greenpeace's eyes. The question to Greenpeace is: where should Indonesia's 230 million people get their power?

Conspiracy theory – Above all, the Greenpeace report attempts to project an image of the Forestry Ministry in Indonesia as a corrupt bureaucratic body that is attempting to derail the bilateral agreement between Norway and Indonesia, or use it to its own advantage. This is a complete misrepresentation of the events to date. News reports quoting the Norwegian deal brokers have stated publicly that talks are stumbling because they have attributed the delays to disagreements over of financial arrangements and whether they should be handled by a domestic agency or a multilateral body such as the World Bank.

The broader question is why Greenpeace itself seems to want the deal halted.

The answer is that Greenpeace fundamentally objects to any economic activity that involves forests. It refers to forestry or agriculture as 'industrial scale' activity and only condones low levels of community forestry that are by and large economically unsustainable.

Any program that would benefit or grow the agriculture or forestry industry's existing operations or see it grow is, according to Greenpeace, objectionable. Any funds that might contribute toward that growth are also objectionable.

This is consistent with Greenpeace's insistence upon rejecting REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation plus sustainable forest management, among other things) at last year's climate summit in Copenhagen. Greenpeace stated that sustainable forest management was 'doublespeak' for the forestry industry. It also accused UN bodies such as the FAO and UNFF of being 'captured' by vested interests.

Greenpeace seems to have done the same with its latest missive. All they have done is substituted FAO with 'Norway' and 'vested interests' with Indonesia.

Fortunately for Indonesia's poor, neither Norway nor Indonesia are likely to buckle to yet another Greenpeace fabrication in Indonesia.