Reducing green house gas emissions from oil palm in Indonesia: Lessons from East Kalimantan

Key Messages

• National and provincial emissions reduction goals and efforts to slow deforestation may come into conflict with provincial and district level economic ambitions based on agricultural development.
• Around half of existing oil palm concessions in East Kalimantan are on forested and peatland areas. If developed, these plantations will release ~206 MtCO2e into the atmosphere.
• The expansion of oil palm plantations on currently allocated concessions will lead to the conversion of forested lands and swamp areas, including peatland, and represents a critical source of carbon emissions.
• To ensure the sustainability of plantation expansion the government needs to undertake a review of all existing plantation permits to ensure that they align with existing sustainability criteria.
• Green Growth does not present a win-win strategy and therefore requires strong political commitment, and awareness of social and environmental tradeoffs.

Download:

• English-Full (0.6 MB)

DOI:

Altmetric score:

Dimensions Citation Count:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License