Press Release International Meeting Climate Change, trend on forest management and land grabbing “Policy in addressing climate crisis and forest management have risks to extend land grabbing” April 16th, 2015. International policy in addressing climate change has failed and it raises a variety of problems in forest management and land grabs in various countries. This was revealed in the International Meeting entitled "Climate change, the trend of forest management and land-grabbing" organized by the National Executive of WALHI on April 15th to 16th 2015 in the Pendopo Walikota Mataram. This event was attended by about 60 participants who come from the local governments, community, and activists WALHI least from 20 provinces. Forest and land management in various countries shows that are not relevant to the expectations of the world's climate crisis management. International and national policies in various countries on forest management and land even more priority to the interests of expansion of the extractive industries. People in various countries with tropical forests, like in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are facing an increasingly of difficult situation. In addition to facing problems due to the bad impact of climate crisis, they are also faced with the problem of land grabbing by the expansion extractive industries, pilot projects for REDD +, and a variety of new schemes forest and land management with the goal of mitigating climate change. As a result, deforestation, forest degradation, increased emissions, and land grabbing conflicts actually increased. Zenzi Suhadi, Campaign Manager of WALHI stated in his presentation, “Indonesia passed 4 (four) phases of expansion and extraction on natural resources. In 2014, Monopoly of forest and land by extractive industries reached 80 million hectares from 132 millions hecteres of total forest of Indonesia; Logging (25 million hectares), Tree plantation (10.1 million hectares), Palm oil plantations (12.5 million hectares), and mining (3.2 million hectares). It was predicted to reach 80 million hectares in 2020. In 2014, deforestation in Indonesia reached 5.6 million hectares per year. In 2014, there were 472 agrarian conflicts in Indonesia with an area reaching 2,860,977.07 hectares involving 105.887 households. Trend of land and forest management in Indonesia today will lead to increased conflict and land grabbing. The Ministry of Forestry in 2014 has allocated 2.7 million hectares for the carbon business and restoration through ecosystem restoration scheme includes Sumatra, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan, Papua and Maluku.” Conference of the Parties (COP) 20 in Lima, Peru resulted decision called Lima Call for Global Climate Action. All States Parties agreed that the effort to control and handling of future climate change will be implemented under the Convention on Climate Change using legal output to be agreed in 2015. But overall, the results of the COP-20 Lima assessed more priority to the interest of Annex 1 countries (USA, Eorope) and corporations , and not significant in drastically reducing emissions before 2020. Some have even called it a 'Roadmap for Global Burning ', because there was no urgent action plan until 2020. In his presentation, Winnie from the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) said, "As in Indonesia, land-grabbing also occur in countries of Latin America and Africa as a region rich of forests. Land grabbing caused by the expansion of logging, mining, oil and gas concessions, as well as the expansion of oil palm plantations and sugar cane, agribusiness (meat, soya, ethanol), infrastructure (hydro dam, roads, railways, waterways). The main policy has failed to stop deforestation (1980 -Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) of the World Bank / FAO; 1990 Sustainable Forest Management (SFM); 2007-2014: REDD +; and now Zero Deforestation - NY
declaration on forests 2014). Landscape REDD, Climate-Smart Agriculture, Biodiversity Offset, and BECCS – bioenergy based on tree plantation indurtry become a new trend of climate change mitigation. However, this scheme is actually more business oriented and will only create a new model conflict of land grabbing (green grabbing) in various countries." In the final session of the meeting, all participants participated in formulating of demands and strategies related to the climate crisis, forest management, and land-grabbing. The main demands stated that all international and national policy schemes in addressing climate crisis which is only based on the interests of rich countries (annex 1) and corporations and creating land grabs in the various regions should be rejected and campaigned internationally. Another important thing is to strengthen the position of communities in forest management and landgrabbing conflict resolution. This startegy also confirmed that the wisdom of communities in forest management and land should be the primary consideration in the mitigation and adaptation policies to climate change and forest management both at national and international level.
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