Forests and the climate are inextricably linked. Worldwide, the degradation and destruction of tropical rainforests is responsible for 15 percent of all annual greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, climate change is negatively affecting forest ecosystems, destabilizing the careful balance that has sustained life for generations.
Home to the world’s second largest stand of tropical rainforests, Indonesia is also at a critical crossroads between global warming and deforestation. The carbon emissions resulting from Indonesia’s rapid deforestation account for around five percent of all global emissions. That’s more than the emissions from all the cars, planes, buses and trains in the U.S. combined. This huge carbon footprint from forest destruction has made non-industrialized Indonesia the third-largest global greenhouse gas emitter, behind only the U.S. and China.
It wasn’t always like this. As recently as the 1960s, a little over 80 percent of the country was forested. Since then, however, illegal logging, government corruption and corporate colonialization have combined to create the conditions for a massive land and resource grab that is moving across the island chain, wiping out forests, species and communities. Today, just under half of Indonesia’s original rainforests remain.
Effects of this forest destruction are well documented. Indonesia has growing environmental and social problems: unique species like the Javan tiger are already extinct and the orangutan is gravely threatened. Burning to clear rainforests is widespread. Pesticides and factory run-off are polluting waterways and local soils. And, increasingly, corporate control of land is spurring human rights abuses and persistent conflicts between companies and local communities.
In order to stop rainforest deforestation and degradation and the oppression of forest peoples, we are striving to change the policies of U.S. agribusinesses and the global pulp and paper industry. If we are successful we will stop the leading drivers of deforestation in Indonesia – palm oil and pulp and paper plantations; protect millions of precious acres; and keep global warming emissions out of the atmosphere.
