Indonesia Walks Back Zero-deforestation Pledge At COP26

Indonesia on Thursday questioned the terms of a deal to end deforestation by 2030 signed by over 100 countries, including the Southeast Asian archipelago, which is home to the world's third-biggest rainforest.

The nations agreed on the multi-billion-dollar plan at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this week to stop cutting down trees on an industrial scale in under a decade.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the agreement was pivotal to the overarching goal of limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius in a bid to slow global warming.

But two senior Indonesian politicians on Thursday threw Jakarta's participation into question. One said the deal did not call for a total end to deforestation, and another said it could not halt President Joko Widodo's development goals.

Indonesia's deputy foreign affairs minister Mahendra Siregar said on Twitter that describing the deal as a zero-deforestation pledge was "false and misleading".

Siti Nurbaya Bakar, Indonesia's environment minister who attended the climate conference in Scotland, said on social media that "forcing Indonesia to zero deforestation in 2030 is clearly inappropriate and unfair".

She added that there were multiple ways to define deforestation, and that any deal could not halt economic growth.

"The massive development of President Jokowi's era must not stop in the name of carbon emissions or in the name of deforestation," she said, referring to Widodo by his nickname.

"Indonesia's natural wealth, including forests, must be managed for its use according to sustainable principles, besides being fair," she said.

In the declaration signed by Indonesia and over 100 countries, leaders committed "to working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation".

Quizzed by reporters, Johnson's spokesman said he did not see a contradiction in Indonesia's statements.

"My understanding of what the Indonesian government has said is that they need to be able to continue legal logging and agriculture to support their economic development," the spokesman said.

"It would be consistent with the pledge -- what countries have committed to is to end net deforestation, ensuring that any forest lost is replaced sustainably."

Kiki Taufik, a forests campaigner with Greenpeace in Indonesia, regretted that the country's environment minister supported "large scale developments which clearly have the potential for environmental destruction".

"If we do not take immediate and substantial action to stop deforestation... we cannot achieve our modest emissions reductions goals".

Although its rate of deforestation has slowed markedly since 2015, Indonesia's vast forests are still shrinking.

According to Global Forest Watch, Indonesia in 2001 had 93.8 million hectares (230 million acres) of primary forest -- ancient forests which have largely not been disturbed by human activity -- an area about the size of Egypt.

By 2020, that area had decreased by about 10 percent.