Indonesia shows flaws

Lives and forests at risk: Indonesia shows flaws in EU’s plans to fight deforestation

New EU proposal to protect forests across the world is unrealistic and easy to bypass, activists say.

BY LEONIE KIJEWSKI

The European Union has a plan to keep forests across the world from falling to the axe. There’s just one problem: Activists in the areas where the trees are being cut say it’s unlikely to work. 

In response to environmental concerns, including rising global temperatures, the European Commission proposed a fresh set of rules last month aiming to curb deforestation abroad. But Southeast Asian environmentalists claim that the new rules are unrealistic, easy to bypass and won’t do much to prevent trees from being felled. 

While the EU has created a wide net of regulations to cut down emissions and prevent environmental damage in its own member states, politicians and environmentalists condemn the bloc for freely importing products that contribute to the destruction of forests abroad. 

One of the countries with the highest deforestation rates worldwide is Indonesia, where activists have been fighting to preserve their forests for years. The problem is particularly acute in the Southeast Asian nation because it’s not only Indonesia’s forests that are at risk: its population, and in particular indigenous peoples, rely on forests for their livelihoods. And in their fight against deforestation, some activists are being killed. 

A European effort to save the country’s forests could mark a turning point, activists say — but only if it takes into account how things actually play out on the ground.  

A plan for the trees 

Under the Commission’s planned rules, companies that want to import cocoa, oil palm, cattle, coffee, soy and wood — and some products derived from them — into the EU would have to show that these products are not associated with deforestation. 

If the rules are adopted — EU countries and the European Parliament still have to agree to them — companies will have to submit a due diligence statement declaring where they have sourced their product.  

Companies will have to provide geolocation data for the plot of land the product comes from as well as contact details for the initial sellers, for example, and keep those records for five years. The idea is to introduce “strict traceability obligations linking the commodities to the plot of land where they were produced,” a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO. 

To help automatically cross-check some of this information, the Commission envisages a digital database, the spokesperson said. That will allow regulators to make sure a plot of land was indeed a farm as declared, whether it could produce the proclaimed quantity of the commodity, and whether more than one operator claimed to be using products produced there, the spokesperson said.  

This should make it harder to cheat the system and easy for EU authorities to notice when someone tries to do so, the spokesperson said.  

‘Cheating the system’

But while the rules might look good on paper, Indonesian activists are skeptical they will work the way Brussels imagines. The plan, they say, is well-intentioned but too far away from the reality on the ground to work.  

The main hurdle, Greenpeace activist Syahrul Fitra explained, is traceability. Products linked to deforestation could be sent for processing to other countries, where companies might try to evade the rules. 

Most of Indonesia’s palm oil — one of the main drivers for deforestation in the country — gets exported to China and India, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia. Exports to Europe only present a fraction of the palm oil that’s shipped from Indonesia.  

“How to make sure China does not export to the EU the product that was identified as coming from deforestation?” Syahrul asked. 

With the Indonesian government’s moratorium on new palm oil plantations expiring this year, the issue is set to become even more pressing. 

And even when products don’t move through other countries, tracking it in Indonesia is easier said than done, Syahrul said. Pointing to the government’s unwillingness to publish data on plantations, he explained that even local organizations found it next to impossible to verify the origin of products — never mind international buyers.  

To address this problem, the Commission wants to combine geolocation data with satellite imagery and maybe even DNA and isotope testing. But that wouldn’t be enough in Indonesia, Syahrul argues, as companies there don’t have to publish such information.   

As evidence of how little rules cooked up in Brussels change things on the ground, he pointed to the EU’s timber regulation, which attempted to curb the flow of illegally logged wood products. In some of Indonesia's crucial forest regions, there was next to no improvement, with businesses being able to easily circumvent the ban. Even the Commission seems to admit its limited impact, arguing that the proposed regulation would "allow the Commission to foresee a dramatic increase" of the rules' effectiveness, according to the spokesperson.

“There isn’t much change in the field,” Syahrul said. “Illegal logging still happens, and companies are cheating the system.”  

To make sure companies comply with the new rules, the Commission plans to set a “minimum level of inspection” that EU countries’ authorities have to conduct, according to the spokesperson. 

Indonesia’s minister for environment and forestry Siti Nurbaya, her deputy Alue Dohong, and environment ministry spokesperson Nunu Anugrah did not respond to requests for comment.  

After initially promising to send questions to her colleagues for a response, the Indonesian environment ministry's director of forest resource monitoring Belinda Arunarwati Margono said that “following the questions, I have no authority to answer and deliver the questions.”   

European palm money

Another major inconsistency in the Commission’s approach to deforestation, according to activists, is that it does little to stop the European money flowing to the plantations responsible to the problem. 

“A lot of European banks are still financing the development of palm oil,” said climate campaigner Yuyun Harmono, who works for Friends of the Earth’s local partner Walhi. 

An investigation by the European Data Journalism Network revealed that European banks, insurance companies, pension funds and asset managers, continued to invest in oil palm plantations in Indonesia in 2020. Although Western banks say they have good checks in place to avoid funding deforestation, European financial institutions were among those cited as having invested in “oil producers sourcing their raw material from plantations where vegetation has been repeatedly burnt down, in breach of Indonesian law.” 

This could change once countries accept the Commission’s proposed list for sustainable investment, but it looks likely that some form of biofuels, derived from palm oil, will still be considered green investments by the EU.   

The Commission rejected this argument.  

 “The EU has several laws in place and in development that address the environmental responsibility of financial institutions,” the spokesperson said. “These laws include specific clauses to prevent deforestation and forest degradation.”  

 The Indonesian Palm Oil Association did not respond to requests for comment.  

‘The forest is our life’ 

While Brussels envisages shuffling due diligence papers as their part in the fight against deforestation, activists in Indonesia often see themselves in direct confrontation with companies clearing the forests. 

And that has severe consequences for them. 

One late night in August, Indonesian environmentalist Tapos was sitting in front of a café at Sanggau Ledo market on the island of Borneo when police showed up and arrested him, fellow conservationist and indigenous rights activist Norman Jiwan said.   

Tapos, like Norman, had been fighting against deforestation in the region. Police took issue with a protest against a palm oil plantation that took place a year earlier during which demonstrators had taken a company’s saw in an attempt to prevent what they believed was illegal logging, Norman said.  

Tapos now has to regularly report to police and is confined to staying in his region. His situation is unlikely to change any time soon, Norman said. “Activists are facing criminalization, they are facing intimidation, they are facing harassment,” he added.  

For indigenous peoples in Indonesia, whose lives are intrinsically linked to forests, deforestation is a matter of losing their way of life. 

“Land is our livelihood, and forest is our life,” said Norman. “Our culture has been historically derived from our interactions with forests.”  

Despite the close link between deforestation and rights abuses, such as land grabbing, the proposed deforestation regulation does not include human rights obligations.  

The Commission claims that this will be covered by its upcoming sustainable corporate governance initiative — but the adoption of those rules has been delayed, leading some to wonder when, and if, they will be put in place. 

It’s this lack of accountability that makes environmentalist Yuyun angry. 

“We need to make these companies, these corporations, accountable for what they did in other countries,” he said.