Search Climate Insights Directory

The project targets a reduction of 16.05 million tCO2eq over seven years in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. It employs a three-component strategy: strengthening institutional and regulatory frameworks, scaling sustainable agricultural supply chains and social forestry, and improving the management and rehabilitation of forest and peatland ecosystems. The initiative focuses on five priority regencies—Kapuas Hulu, Ketapang, Kubu Raya, Sanggau, and Sintang—targeting 680,000 direct beneficiaries, including indigenous peoples and women, to transition toward low-emission and climate-resilient land-use pathways.

The report details a systemic failure of governance in Ketapang District, West Kalimantan, where oil palm expansion—driven by EU biofuel targets—has led to widespread illegal land clearing, deforestation of protected forests, and severe social conflicts. It highlights that the Ketapang government issued permits for approximately 40% of the district's land in just three years, often bypassing legal requirements for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and forestland release approvals. The document argues that voluntary certification schemes like the RSPO and the EU's Renewable Energy Directive (RED) are insufficient to prevent these abuses, as they lack rigorous legality checks and fail to address 'replacement effects' where certified oil is diverted to energy, pushing the food sector toward unsustainable sources. Socially, the expansion has resulted in land grabs from indigenous communities and precarious labor conditions, including the non-payment of smallholders and chemical poisoning of workers.

The paper argues that Indonesia can meet rising global vegetable oil demand without further deforestation by combining yield intensification with expansion onto degraded lands, specifically alang-alang grasslands and flat secondary forests. It finds that management practices are more critical to yield than previous land use and that alang-alang grasslands offer the lowest establishment costs and fastest carbon payback times.