LANDac International Conference 2022 Session Summary

• Much of the landscape of Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province has been transformed, its formerly vast forests razed for logging, monocrop agriculture and open-cast coal mining.
• A recently published study analyzes how waves of extractive industries have affected the inhabitants of one village in the province
• The cumulative impacts of these industries were found to be severe, but also to vary depending on multiple factors including ethnicity, gender, wealth and age.

• Fires have swept through large swaths of peatland forest in the western part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island since the start of the year, an area that usually sees much smaller, controlled fires.
• Environmental activists say they suspect the fires might be linked to palm oil companies with plantations in and around the burned areas.
• They warn the burning could get worse in the coming months, with the dry season in this part of Sumatra expected to peak only in August.

JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the

• For years, people have settled illegally in national parks around Indonesia, clearing the land and farming it in the hope they will eventually be granted legal title to it.
• While the authorities’ default response has been to evict them, a new government program is taking a more collaborative approach that aims to be a win-win for both the parks and the people.
• Under the “conservation partnership” program, the settlers acknowledge that they cannot lay claim to the land and must work to restore damaged ecosystems.
• In turn, they’re

• The Indonesian government’s decision to revoke permits for plantation firms to operate in forest areas could lead to lawsuits filed by the companies, environmental law experts say.
• The permits were rescinded at the start of the year, not because of any environmental violations, but rather because the concession holders were deemed to be moving too slowly in exploiting the resources.
• But the unilateral revocations have set up an unprecedented legal mess, observers and industry representatives say, with no clarity over whether a company that has lo

• The Indonesian government has rejected a proposal made by a prominent university to reclassify oil palms as a forest crop.
• The proposal was ostensibly meant to resolve the problem of illegal plantations operating inside forest areas, and would have redefined plantations as forests, and new plantings as reforestation.
• The environment ministry says it has no plans to adopt such a plan because it has its own program, the social forestry scheme, to get local communities to switch from illegal oil palm plantations to more sustainable, and profitable,

• With the Indonesian government refusing to renew a three-year ban on issuing licenses for new oil palm plantations, experts are warning of a deforestation free-for-all.
• The end of the moratorium means companies can once again apply to develop new plantations, including clearing forests to do.
• This coincides with a rally in the crude palm oil price due to tightening supply, which activists say portends a possible surge in deforestation.
• According to one analysis, rainforests spanning an area half the size of California, or 21 mil

IPNEWS – Monrovia: Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) and Milieudefensie, a Dutch NGO, have accused the oil palm company Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) of not living up the full commitment of the memorandum of understanding it signed with communities in within its concession areas. At a press conference on Thursday, August 12, both organizations called upon the Government of Liberia to ensure agribusiness in Liberia halts deforestation and rights violations.

The global thirst for palm oil has never been more ravenous. Caught between it and a multigenerational war on Thailand’s poor are the farmers of the Southern Peasants’ Federation, who simply want a piece of land to call their own.

Main photo: Palm tree jungles and the mountains of Surat Thani Province in southern Thailand.