Oil Palm Expansion and Forest Conversion

Related Documents • Oil palm, soybeans and critical habitat loss • The Kalimantan Border Oil Palm Mega-Project • The Hesitant Boom: Indonesia's Oil Palm Sub-Sector in an Era of Economic Crisis and Political Change • A forest of palms: the political economy of Indonesia’s oil palm sub-sector and the fate of the forest

Oil palm has been one of the most dynamic of Indonesia’s agricultural sub-sectors in recent years.  Dating from the 1960s, the oil palm sub-sector expanded from around 106,000ha to 5.6 million ha in 2005. This prolific growth has conferred important economic benefits but it has also become a source of concern because much of Indonesia's oil palm expansion has occurred at the expense of tropical forest cover.

SEKALA aims to analyze oil palm expansion and its impact on forest conversion in Indonesia. It also aims to support informed spatial planning which identifies suitable areas for oil palm conversion and conserves high conservation value forests.

Sekala is currently providing GIS analysis for an oil palm study commissed on behalf of the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry for the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP) due to be held in Bali in early December 2007. This study seeks to:

1) quantify the impact of oil palm expansion on forest cover and peat lands;

2) quantify carbon emissions resulting from oil palm expansion into forested lands and peatlands;

3) identify realistic strategies that may be applied to reduce carbon emissions resulting from forest and peatland clearance for oil palm developments; and

4) examine opportunity costs associated with identified strategies.