Indonesia’s deforestation: Setting reference emission levels and Understanding drivers of deforestation

Arief Wijaya1, Lou Verchot1, Martin Herold2, Arild Angelsen3, Erika Romijn2 and John-Herbert Ainembabazi3

1 Forest and Environment Programme, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia

2 Center for Geo-Information Science, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

3 Department of Plants and Environmental Sciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB), Oslo, Norway

Introduction: Indonesia and REDD+

Third largest area of tropical forest in the world after Brazil and DRC (World Bank, 2007)

High deforestation rate of 0.83 million ha/year (MoF, 2009)

80% of Indonesia GHG emissions come from LULUCF activities; from conversion of peatlands (45%) and forestlands (35%) (DNPI, 2009)

More than 30 REDD+projects in Indonesia (Atmadja, 2010; Sekala, 2012)

Setting a forest reference emissions level (REL) for Indonesia

Forest reference level (RLs) and forest reference emission levels (RELs) are a business as usual (BAU) baseline to assess a country’s performance in implementing REDD+ (UNFCCC, 2011)

The uses of RLs:– to establish a reference point or benchmark against which actual

emissions (and removals) are compared

– to serve a benchmark for payments in a results-based REDD+ mechanism

RLs development is data-driven approach (need exhaustive and reliable activity data and emission factors)

Capacity gap of non-annexes I countries

Capacity assessment based on FAO FRA 2005/10; includes information on forest area change, forest inventory and carbon pool reporting capabilities (adopted from Herold, 2012)

How RL can be estimated?

Historical approach– Historical approach with or without trends

– Historical approach with adjustment

Modelling approach– Considering historical emissions – adjusted REL/RL

Forward looking approach (no relations with historical emissions)

Modeling of current deforestation

Applying relatively straight forward statistical method, multi-linear regression

Various input combinations were experimented:– Historical deforestation

– Trend in historical deforestation

– Forest cover

– Agriculture GDP and price indices

– Other related variables

Modeling resultsGlobal Brazil Vietnam Indonesia

Historical deforestation 0.639*** 0.395*** 1.464*** 0.259***Trend variable 0.001 0.003 -0.136*** -0.145*** -0.006** 0.003Deforestation dummy -0.067*** -0.180*** -0.373*** -0.773*** 0.011* -0.031** -0.541 -1.096**Forest stock 0.119** 0.894*** 2.180*** 4.756*** 0.067 0.260** 7.479*** 9.062***Forest stock sq. -0.115* -0.882*** -1.800*** -3.826*** -0.189** -0.463** -6.292** -7.201**log of GDP per capita -0.004** -0.013** -0.034* -0.130*** 1.507*** 1.855***Agric. GDP (% of GDP) 0.004*** 0.008*** 0.117*** 0.280*** 0.116*** 0.136***Agric. (% of GDP) sq. -0.000*** -0.000*** -0.001** -0.002***Crop price index -0.001 -0.001Population density 0.002 -0.001 -0.125*** -0.081*** -1.177* 1.036** -0.428*** -0.549***Road density 0.039*** 0.076*** 0.004* -0.001 -2.042** -1.358Control of corruption -0.022** -0.099***Regulatory quality -0.001 0.001Political stability 0.035*** 0.071***Voice & accountability -0.027** -0.007R2 0.895 0.67 0.831 0.789 0.515 0.052 0.787 0.771Number of observations 650 650 3595 3595 301 301 371 371

National circumstances across countries

Historical deforestation

Forest cover

Gross domestic product (GDP)

Agricultural GDP

Human population

Road net work

-2 -1.5 -1 -.5 0 .5 1 1.5Elasticity estimates with 95% confidence interval

Global BrazilVietnam Indonesia

Land cover change monitoring

Forest cover change 2000 – 2009Data from Indonesian Ministry of Forestry (2009)Based on interpretation of Landsat TM/ETM data

Forest definitions matter!

Distribution of deforestation drivers in Indonesia from 2000 to 2009 based on analysis of follow-up land cover/land use type

Underlying causes of deforestation in Indonesia

Deforestation rates (official data MoF)

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

0.5

0.68

0.3

0.410.22

0.13

1.37

2.83

0.78 0.760.61

0.32

1.87

3.51

1.081.17

0.83

0.45

Year

Def

ores

tatio

n (m

illio

n he

ctar

e)

1990-1996 1996-2000 2000-2003 2003-2006 2006-2009 2009-2011

Indonesia

Forest land

Non-forest land

Source: MoF (2012)

Comparison of different study

1990-2000

2000-2001

2001-2002

2002-2003

2003-2004

2004-2005

2005-2006

2006-2007

2007-2008

2008-2009

2009-20100

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

Indonesia MOFOR Indonesia Hansen

Indonesia JRC Indonesia Mean

Annu

al D

efor

esta

tion

(x 1

000

ha)

Cumulative LUCF carbon emissions

SourceCumulative Emission from

LUCF 2000 -2009(in Gg CO2e)*

Methods Remarks

FAOStat 3,140,033 FRA country report(EF = 138 ton C/ha) Net forest conversion

MoE - Second National Communication to UNFCCC 7,443,064 IPCC Guidelines 2006 Net forest conversion

Winrock International (Harris, 2012) 3,468,150 Carbon Bookkeping model

(RS + Field) Gross deforestation

MOF (official) 1,760,000 Approach 1 + NFI(Tier 1 or 2)

Net forest conversion (peat?) - carbon emissions potential

MOF + Saatchi (CIFOR) 1,811,396 Approach 1 + Global EF(Tier 1 or 2) Net forest conversion

Mean 3,524,529

* does not include peat emissions and peat fire

Annual LUCF Carbon emissions

Toward consensus of deforestation rate estimate

Source of differences:

Forest definitions

Approaches, data and scale

Issues from government authority:

Transparency and openness of the MoF– Robustness and data uncertainty

– Validation

Issue of sovereignty?

Thank you!

Comments and questions??