Indonesia Successfully Reduces Deforestation and Land, Forest Fires
- ANTARA FOTO/Ardiansyah
Jakarta – Indonesian Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said that Indonesia remains committed to contributing to global efforts to control climate change. This commitment is evidenced by the achievement of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target.
Minister Bakar said the results of the national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory calculation showed the level of GHG emissions in 2022 amounted to 1,220 Mton CO2e obtained from each category or sector.
"Those are Energy at 715.95 Mton CO2e, Industrial Processes and Product Use at 59.15 Mton CO2e, and Agriculture at 89.20 Mton CO2e. Then, Forest Fire and Peat at 221.57 Mton CO2e and Waste at 221.57 Mton CO2e," the Minister said in a official statement on Sunday.
When compared to the previous year (2021), the total emission level increased by 6.9%. However, the 2022 emission level when compared to Business as Usual (BAU) in the same year showed a decrease of 42%.
Taking into account the results of monitoring forest cover change from 2020 and 2021, it can be seen that Indonesia's Net Deforestation Rate in 2021-2022 has decreased by 8.4%.
When viewed from the data series of each observation period starting from 1996-2000, the amount of deforestation can increase or decrease.
Minister Bakar explained that this happens because of the dynamics of land cover change due to human activities in utilizing land, resulting in the loss of forest cover or the addition of forest cover due to planting.
"As an illustration, deforestation data from the 1996-2000 period to the 2020-2021 monitoring year period shows that deforestation has decreased to the lowest point in the last 20 years at 0.11 million ha," she explained.
"Meanwhile, data for 2022 shows that deforestation has further reduced to 104 thousand hectares and in 2023 it will also further reduce,"
Minister Bakar said that forest and land fires (karhutla) in 2023 were successfully minimized compared to 2019 with almost the same El-Nino influence, even drier conditions in 2023.
This condition was anticipated through various efforts to prevent forest and land fires since the beginning of the year and consistently carry out various efforts to prevent forest and land fires, starting from monitoring hotspots, establishing policies, taking action in the field both preventive measures, extinguishing, to law enforcement.
Indonesia also managed to mitigate the impact of El Nino so that the number of hotspots and the extent of forest and land fires were not as high as in previous years.
The area of forest and land fires in 2023 is 1,161,192 ha while the area of forest and land fires in 2019 is 1,649,258 ha.