$30m Sumatra forest deal in doubt after
concerns over funding
THE future of a much-vaunted $30 million Australian project to protect Indonesian forests for their carbon is in doubt after an independent review found it is not the best use of the money.
The project on the island of Sumatra was announced by Labor in early 2010 to international fanfare, but so far there has been little detail
about the project's design.
It is understood there has been no actual on-ground work in Sumatra and
officials to date have done research only.
It is the second Australian-Indonesian carbon project to face setbacks.
The Herald reported in March that a $47 million project to
restore peatland in Kalimantan, launched in 2007, had quietly been scaled back
and was suffering major delays.
Indonesia is recognised as the world's fifth-largest producer of greenhouse
gases, with 60 per cent of its emissions coming from rapid deforestation and
associated activities.
The review of Australia's Indonesian carbon programs, costing $100 million
overall, found the Sumatran project ''may not be the most effective utilisation
of available funding and that the changing policy context provides an
opportunity for reconsideration of the proposal''.
A spokesman for the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, said Australia
was discussing with the Indonesian government alternative approaches to work in
Sumatra.
''Work has not started on the ground because we have not yet agreed on the
revised scope of work,'' the spokesman said.
The Sumatra project is a pilot for a proposed global system, known as
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, in which
developing nations could earn money from carbon credits created from forest
preservation projects by selling them to rich countries for use in meeting
their emission reduction targets.
The independent review was handed to the government early last year, but was only made public by the Australian overseas aid agency AusAID in recent weeks.
It calls for the ''reconsideration'' of the Sumatra pilot in light of the
challenges and delays in the Kalimantan project and the emergence of other
Indonesian forest schemes, including a $1 billion investment by Norway.
Passive voice sentence in an above article:
- The project on the island of Sumatra was announced by Labor in early 2010. (Past Tense).
- The independent review was handed to the government early last year, but was only made public by the Australian overseas aid agency AusAID in recent weeks. (Past Tense).
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