Jakarta ( WNAM MONITORING) Indonesia has huge potential to utilize nature-based solutions in combating climate change, a top official from the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment said
at the Indonesia Net-Zero Summit here Saturday.
The country’s potential could contribute to 15 percent of the nature-based solutions globally, with an estimated 6.7 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e), the ministry’s Deputy for Coordination of Environmental and Forestry Management Nani Hendiarti stated.
“We are (located) in a tropical country. We have 125 million (hectares) of tropical forest. We have peat, we have mangroves, and we have very large areas of land. Hence, the open and utilized land is also quite a lot, utilized in a context that can also help absorb the carbon,” she remarked.
Considering such potential, the government issued a work plan to reduce emissions — specifically in the Forestry and Other Land Use (FOLU) sector — to achieve the target by 2030.
FOLU Net Sink 2030 refers to a condition to be achieved wherein the level of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) absorption is equal to or higher than the 2030 emission levels through the FOLU sector.
She explained that one of the efforts the government continues to make along with relevant stakeholders is reducing land fires and deforestation, which massively contribute to the amount of GHG emissions in the country, apart from the energy sector.
The rate of deforestation has successfully slowed down in recent years, with government data showing that in the 1996-2000 period, deforestation occurred in an area of 3.51 million hectares.
This figure then decreased to 1.09 million hectares in the 2014-2015 period and 470 thousand hectares in the 2018-2019 period.
Deforestation continued to slow down by 75 percent, recorded at 115 thousand hectares in the 2019-2020 period. The deforestation figure in 2022 reached 104 thousand hectares.
In addition, Indonesia recorded a decrease in land fires, which covered 105,539.57 hectares of area this year, compared to 1.6 million hectares in 2019 and 1.16 million hectares last year.
“What the government is doing is a preventive effort,” she stated.
