JAKARTA — Indonesia’s plan to clear rainforests half the size of Switzerland for sugarcane plantations isn’t just an agricultural gamble, experts warn — it’s a potential environmental catastrophe. A new report by Jakarta-based think tank the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) found that the government’s so-called food estate program will drive a significant spike in global carbon emissions from massive forest loss. The project involves clearing 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of forests, wetlands and grasslands in Merauke district in the country’s eastern Papua region, on the border with Papua New Guinea, to make way for a cluster of giant sugarcane plantations. This makes the project one of the largest legalized deforestation undertakings in the world. Based on the estimated biomass of the forests in Merauke, the deforestation will release 782.45 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to the CELIOS report. That’s the equivalent of the emissions from 187 coal-fired power plants in a year, and would amount to an estimated $3 billion loss in carbon value, the report says. These emissions would also represent up to 143% of Indonesia’s annual emissions from deforestation, and would nearly double Indonesia’s current share of global emissions, from 2-3% at present to close to 5%. This would set back by a decade the government’s stated goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2060, the report says. The sheer scale of this deforestation would also mean the loss of critical ecosystems in southern Merauke, a unique mosaic…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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