What causes deforestation in Indonesia?

Abstract

We investigate the causes of deforestation in Indonesia, a country with one of the highest rates of primary natural forest loss in the tropics, annually between 2001 and 2016. We use high spatial resolution imagery made available on Google Earth to characterize the land cover types following a random selection of deforestation events, drawn from the Global Forest Change dataset. Notorious in the region, large-scale oil palm and timber plantations together contributed more than two-fifths of nationwide deforestation over our study period, with a peak in late aughts followed by a notable decline up to 2016. Conversion of forests to grasslands, which comprised an average of one-fifth of national deforestation, rose sharply in dominance in years following periods of considerable fire activity, particularly in 2016. Small-scale agriculture and small-scale plantations also contributed onefifth of nationwide forest loss and were the dominant drivers of loss outside the major islands of Indonesia. Although relatively small contributors to total deforestation, logging roads were responsible for a declining share of deforestation, and mining activities were responsible for an increasing share, over the study period. Direct drivers of deforestation in Indonesia are thus spatially and temporally dynamic, suggesting the need for forest conservation policy responses tailored at the subnational level, and new methods for monitoring the causes of deforestation over time.

Annual oil palm plantation maps in Malaysia and Indonesia from 2001 to 2016

“…Oil palm expansion is one of the major drivers of deforestation in the studied region (Austin et al 2018). Therefore, the forest area loss map from Hansen et al (2013) was overlaid with the AOPD map, and the results are shown for selected areas in Figure 10.…”

“…In other case such as area (b), a larger discrepancy was found in the two maps because of different causes. For example, forest 415 loss is not always caused by oil palm expansion but timber plantation, logging, fires, conversion from forest to grassland and agriculture (Austin et al, 2018;Kamlun et al, 2016). Meanwhile, expansion of oil palm plantation didn't always occur in forest area, but also in non-forest area.…”

“…Industrial oil palm plantations spurred the economic sectors in Southeast Asian countries but also raised concerns on the negative social and environmental 105 impacts (Obidzinski et al, 2012;Sayer et al, 2012). Recently, oil palm plantations expansion became one of the dominant drivers of deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia (Austin et al, 2018;Gaveau et al, 2016). Thus, we chose the whole Malaysia, Sumatra and Kalimantan in Indonesia (covering 98.91% of the total oil palm plantation area in Indonesia) as the study area.…”

“…According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Malaysia and Indonesia account for 85.11% of the global oil palm production in 2013, which has increased by 163% 35 from 2000 to 2013 (see http://faostat.fao.org) and will continue growing (Corley, 2009). The boom of oil palm industries caused and also raised the deforestation risks (Austin et al, 2018;Vijay et al, 2018), particularly in regions like Malaysia and Indonesia where forest cover dropped from 76% to 9% since 1990 (Miettinen et al, 2016). A series of consequences include but not limited in biodiversity decline (Fitzherbert et al, 2008), peatland loss (Koh et al, 2011) and carbon emission (Guillaume et al, 2018).…”

Palm Oil and the Politics of Deforestation in Indonesia

“…The positive effects of the transition to large-scale oil palm agriculture remain locally contested, as they have been accompanied by large losses in natural landscapes, negative ecological outcomes, and reductions in biodiversity services (Austin et al, 2019(Austin et al, , 2017Clough et al, 2016;Denmead et al, 2017). Licensing oil palm production has been shown to double deforestation rates (Busch et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2019).…”