 This morning I'll try to give a brief talk on the forest cover dynamics in Asia over the past two decades and their policies and consequences. This is actually part of the work that have been done for the last one year. We have a collaboration with Directorate Forestry Planning under the Ministry of Forestry and we just recently finished this collaboration last year. So I'm going to start to talk with the introduction. So as many developing countries see actually, therefore station is necessary and it's actually a common trade-off for development, also to support the economic growth and also to improve livelihood and elevate the poverty. As a consequence is, therefore station contribute to 6 to 17 percent of global emissions, total global emissions worldwide. And Indonesia as home for the third largest tropical countries is also suffering similar occurrence or events. However, we argue if forest clearing in Indonesia is effective and is directed to support development in a way that forest can sustain in the future. And this is actually important because based on recent national communication report submitted to UNFCCC, 85 percent of total greenhouse gases emissions in Indonesia actually comes from land use, land use chains and forestry sectors. 55 percent of those actually from their first station and the remaining more than 50 percent, 40 percent actually from pit fires and pit oxidation because of the pit drainage. We use the data generated by Minister of Forestry. We work together to do an exercise trying to estimate forest carbon emissions projections in the future for FL or forest reference emissions level as an exercise. So we use the data, land use data from 1990, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012 which was actually refined and improved by Ministry of Forestry and check for consistency and reliability. And this is actually interesting because the data has not only forest and non-forest information but also information on different land use that includes primary forest, secondary forest, they also differentiate between mangrove forest, upland forest, pit swamp forest, rice cultivation, estate crops, crops, garden and so on. So we could actually classify those classes into several subclasses to identify key drivers of deforestation and also to actually analyze what is actually the post forest land use and to identify the proximate causes causing forest clearing in Indonesia. Forest is actually defined as a land spending more than 0.25 hectares with a three higher than five meters and it cannot be covered of more than 30 percent. So the first finding was we found forest top in 1990 was about 113 million hectares and it decreased substantially in 2012 where we found only 92 million hectares of forest remain which means that across 22 years Indonesia lost about 21 million hectares of forest. Deforestation trend however decreased in the first decade which is from 1990 to 2000. Deforestation trend, deforestation rate was about 1.2 million hectares per year and in the recent decade from 2000 to 2012 deforestation rate was actually around 0.7 million hectares per year. However in the last three years of our study from 2009 to 2012 the trend of deforestation increased and it reached to 650,000 hectares of forest loss in in the final year in 2012 which is actually higher than deforestation in Brazilian Amazon. We also found that forest degradation is a major precursor for deforestation. Over the study period we found the extent of primary upland forest decreased from 52 million hectares to 40 million hectares across 22 years period. At the same time the extent of degraded upland forest or secondary upland forest remains relatively unchanged which was around 37 million hectares. However we found also that deforestation from degraded forest actually contribute to more than 55% of total deforestation and only less than 5% deforestation came from primary forest. So this actually confirms other studies that once forest actually opened it has more access, easy access it's actually easier to confer to other land users. And what happens actually after deforestation and this is actually very interesting. We found 12 million hectares of forest loss between 1990 to 2000. 40% of this which is around 5.8 million hectares were actually converted to shrubs or open land and these two land use can be actually considered as non-productive because there is no actually real economic activities or this land use actually has no real economic benefits compared to other land use for example agriculture, estate crops, rice cultivations, timber plantations and others. And only 1.8 million hectares of forest were cleared and converted to subsystem agriculture while 1.7 million hectares of forest actually used for the expansions of estate crops mainly oil pump and sometimes mixed with rubber. And this trend actually continues between 2000 and 2012 of about 8.7 million hectares of forest actually lost and 52% or 4.5 million hectares of forest actually converted to shrub and plus 1.4 million hectares of forest actually cleared and converted to open land. This is very interesting and fascinating since the general perspective sees that deforestation is a fuel for development then it comes to our argument does deforestation in Indonesia actually lead to more shrubs or it creates more jobs. And when we analyze the this unproductive land use these shrubs and open land development across the two decades we found that there was a substantially increase in shrub lands and up and open lands from 22 million hectares in 1990 to 27 million hectares of in 2012. And we also follow the trajectory of shrub lands across the 22 years period. Between 1990 and 2000 there were 6.2 million hectares of shrubs actually converted from forest land and in 2012 5.1 million hectares of those shrubs or open land remains as the same land categories which means that only 1.1 million hectares of forest converted to shrub lands and used in 2012. So the rest of it there remains as shrubs. In general we found that clear forest remains as unproductive for about 13.4 years at national scale. However in Sumatra and Kalimantan in Sumatra where the needs of lands is more pressing the unproductive lands is normally they are actually for 11.4 years and in Kalimantan is actually 12.8 years. The land remains unproductive. And what about actually the consequences to the emissions? We did more detail analysis for the two pit lands converted to shrubs and we found that from 1990 to 2012 there were 12 million hectares of forest loss and it's converted to shrub lands and that includes actually the conversion of 5.1 million hectares of forest of pit forest to shrubs. And when we calculated we estimated the emissions out of it from the from the above ground carbon loss of about 7.4 gigaton of CO2 equivalent were actually released to the atmosphere. And as an addition 2.5 gigaton of CO2 actually released to the atmosphere from the oxidation of pit soil from from the pit soil. So in total actually when we compare with other study published in PNES the emissions from pit lands converted to shrubs from 1990 to 2010 actually contribute to 57% of total emissions from deforestation and pit land degradation nationally. And it's pretty huge actually. So based on our findings we set up some or we have some recommendations related to the policies. First it's actually useful actually to intensify the use of unproductive land such as those abandoned absentee land which was actually classified as shrubs or open land. And this actually could save 10 million over 10 million hectares of forest land which was allocated under convertible forest. And then it was it can be replaced by such abandoned land. Second is that the proper evaluations on the planning of forest land allocation zone. Our study also found that 36 million hectares of production or limited production forest were actually allocated in 2012. But and within this area actually forest clearing is very is very limited. But we found nearly half of forest loss between 2000 and 2012 actually occurred in the production or limited production forest zones. So the proper evaluation of forest planning should be also conducted. And it's also useful as suggested by several other studies to extend the coverage of forest moratorium not only to include primary forest and pit land but also to include secondary forest which is still high in biodiversity and has a relatively high carbon stocks. And this actually could simply save more than 34 million hectares of degraded forest in 2012 which was actually degrade annually degraded from 1990 to 2012 at at the rate of 0.8 million hectares per year. And the last recommendation would be it's also useful to to consider the options of zero deforestation policies for further expansions of oil palm plantation and and pulp and paper plantations. So I guess that's my my talk. Thank you and it's time for Q&A. Thank you. Okay thank you Arif. That was very informative. Do we have some questions? Christof? Excellent presentation. A lot of a lot of things to think about and a lot of questions to ask. Maybe I'll try three. First when you talk about when you talk about these shrub shrub shrub lands basically we're talking about degraded land or that land that's been sort of a you know degraded sort of deforested land savanna style. I'm just trying to make sure that I understand the the definition of the concept. So just a clarification on that. You know I really I'm looking forward to the and I assume that you will probably publish something based on this so I look forward to a to a paper published so we can read and sort of learn more. But you know we all have kind of a basic understanding that in Indonesia over time there's a lot of a lot of land has been allocated to various concessions. A lot of land has been cleared. Not much land has been or much less land has been planted. You know which you show in your analysis that you know so many hectares millions of hectares have been you know cleared and and so my question is do we know more about why? I mean we kind of know that okay millions of hectares have been deforested only a little bit has been planted whether for oil palm or for anything else and everything else has been kind of idle for for decades. I think I think the question why like why why why is is is something that's itching and the final final question you mentioned about the emissions that is generally assumed that something like six to seven percent at the beginning of your presentation seven to twelve percent seven to twelve originates from land from the first agent globally globally I just saw something I think it was came from Lou or somebody else last week that there are some new estimates indicating that perhaps up to 40 percent or whatever of any global emissions can be coming from land use so I just maybe somebody else can comment on this I don't know I'm not necessarily to you but these figures are quite you know kind of changing so okay good thanks yourself for the questions very interesting so what we actually identified as shops here is is a more of the mix between like Savannah cross line it could be like from from one meters to different more like two meters or so in high but it's it's still it in in many cases also mixed with like sparse trees like a group of group of sparse trees so and the the expert from Minister of Forestry they actually identified this they're still I mean they don't find like a regular patches if as if if someone find timber plantations or any concessions where you have like regular patches so it's more like irregular patches and then the from the satellite data you can also see that this is not as rough as trees so then it was actually identified as shops so this is the first thing and yes we are not still working in the in the paper in the manuscript for journal now it's it's under internal review so it's still with other co-authors but sure we will publish that thank you and why idle actually to be honest I have some speculations on it although actually I don't know I mean it still need to be proven to provide some more scientific evidence one is actually because of quite a number of companies we actually overlay those shrub lengths with the map of concessions and map of hapeha so timber logging concessions also hapeha timber plantations and quite a number of of those shrubs are actually within those concessions first thing that come up into my mind is I guess it's a practice of land banking of this concession that they actually they want to keep the concession active they they took all the timbers but then they actually they don't really have an intention to convert those areas into more productive land but they keep the the license active because every two years it's still reported to minister of forestry and it's actually still an active concession but no actually an active activist but this is one thing and the second is that it's also a specific speculations what I discussed with the people from minister of environment many of of those degraded lands once it was degraded and converted shrubs the local people came in and claimed the land and it creates actually more conflicts at the local level and the global land use would have thank you and in my understanding the last report the fifth assessment of IPCC report actually estimated 11 percent of total emissions coming from blue Lucia from land use and use in forestry I mean I hope my answer is correct from deforestation yeah 11 percent so thanks Lou Louie I guess first or Louie so yeah the the use of the term shrubs also is the first thing that stuck stuck out for me and I just wanted to ask if and forgive me if you already mentioned it but how much land classified as shrubs um returned to forest through natural succession uh during you know during the time period that you were looking at if you have that and if if it's not looked at that way then one would you know there definitely costs to conversion of shrub land to what you might call other productive uses such as oil palm etc in terms of biodiversity and there is presumably at least in some kinds of land that are classified as shrub land a potential future of a kind of of a rich secondary forest so I'm curious to know if those things that have been taken into account if not in this study but in others that you've looked at and if there's potential to learn a lot more about it thanks Louie so I don't have the number in my mind but we estimated of about it's only 1.9 percent of areas deforested between 1990 to 2012 and it actually grows back as forest in 2012 so it's it's very subtle actually so I could actually say that it's very unlikely once forest actually clear converted to any other land use including to shrubs it's very unlikely these areas across 22 years period over our study period it will grow back as forest and it's also the same case for degraded forest once it was degraded in the secondary forest state it's also very unlikely it will grows back as primary forest because many of those degraded forest actually then deforested I hope it's answer your questions okay thank you Arif it's really nice talk especially when we talk about the deforestation in Indonesia I'm sure that you might be aware about the deforestation rate published by Belinda Margonos at all as well as the Forest Watch Indonesia I mean we got a different various number of deforestation rate it will be interesting to know I mean to explore further scientifically you know what are the difference and then what is your argument with your your rates that you just mentioned thank you thank you we compared the data the Ministry of Forestry data with the one from Belinda Margonos published in Nature Climate Change last year and actually Belinda's data shows lower deforestation as the Ministry of Forestry data so I cannot pick up the number but the Belinda's data in her paper also mentioned that the data that is produced by her from her study is actually compared with the Ministry of Forestry data and it has over 90 percent of agreement with the Ministry of Forestry data but this is actually 90 percent of agreement from forest cover in year 2000 but not in the deforestation annual deforestation among those two data sets but I could tell you that it's actually comparable with with the data published by by Belinda previously compared to Hansen's data it has a different definitions because Hansen's data include three loss from plantations as a forest cover loss so it has actually inflated estimate I mean the Hansen data so it's not comparable because both data set the Ministry of Forestry and Hansen's data they have a different forest definitions thank you other questions Christine I'd like to go back to the question that Louis asked because that was that was sort of my question but it was a little bit of a twist I was wondering having spent you know many years of my life watching swiddens or shifting cultivation fields grow back into secondary forest the fact that you essentially say that the regrowth rate is sort of negligible for Indonesia and I'm just wondering is it is it I mean part part of it may just be the classification what I think is a secondary forest you know you classify as shrubs but also I wonder whether there's an issue of size you know that there are small plots the kinds of the kinds of places that sort of characterize ladang that are continuously sort of going back into something that resembles secondary forest but what you're looking for and what you're seeing are large areas I mean I wonder if there's actually a if there's a principle here of some kind you know that sort of small deforestation areas do tend to go back to I mean not to primary forest I mean the very thought of calling it primary forest means that nothing gets back to being primary forest right but that goes back to being some classification of forest but what you're looking at largely is our larger areas that would not be that you know that would not appear as in your images thanks thanks Christine that could be true the thing is that the Ministry of Forestry data they they actually use this Landsat data which has 30 meter resolution of spatial so one pixel actually has a size of 30 meter which means that it's a it covers 900 square meters on the ground however in the in the in the interpretation process to I mean to to interpret those satellite data into land use map the minimum unit which means that the smallest size of the polygons is 6.25 hectares and this small or shifting agriculture a small scale which has a size less than 6.25 hectares could be I mean neglected and I mean excluded from from from from the or I mean let's say reforestation at very small scale could be also excluded because of the size of this minimum size of 6.25 so yes you're right it could be one one thing that could be one type of error which could come up from this this data other questions yeah hi I just like to add a comment because Arif and I have been working together on this shrubs and jobs paper and I think the motivation for us is just to raise awareness that one deforestation can lead to a lot of shrubs and these are the categories that people don't actively manage and also don't figure as productive so the question can be are these things productive what is going on in here so the questions of Christoph need to be further analyzed but not based on our data because our data is just to to make that point and the second thing is that these shrubs are not temporary so a lot of the times assumption is nature will take its course and then it will just you know come back but we've waited and waited for so long and it doesn't grow back so something has to be done and these has to be better managed in Indonesia thank you are there other questions thank you do I get to ask mine okay I'd like to ask you about this the zero deforestation that you touched on at the tail end you showed that a lot of this degraded land is in peatlands so if companies are going to stop deforestation and actually go to areas where there's land available it's often in peatlands what does this mean for the emissions reductions potential of these zero deforestation pledges if instead of chopping down the forest they're actually going to go to these peatlands and drain them and and put them into turn them into productive areas as we estimated actually so the confessions of peat forests and two shrubs from the loss of the carbon stocks above ground it will emit actually the the it will lost instantly the the the stocks of carbon which is equal to 7.4 gigaton of CO2 this this we estimate actually for for 20 years from 1990 2010 and then plus the emissions from peat itself is around 2.5 gigaton CO2 equivalent so it means that in total it's like around 9.9 10 10 gigaton of CO2 equivalent of a carbon loss when actually peat forests convert to shrublands and it's actually the estimate for for 20 years period so the and the the loss of degraded the loss of peat swarm is also staggering so what would we would I recommend to to have a zero deforestation policies for further expansion of oil pump and and pop and paper plantation could actually ease the the emissions from from from this confession from land confessions by by getting them out of out of the peatland exactly okay Chris so if you turn this around you say there's I forgot the numbers but there's a huge amount of areas that are under secondary growth unproductive so if you turn this around then you could say well let's then put the oil palm on those lands because it will add biomass to those lands it will add product productivity to those lands is that a bit dangerous or is that a a valid proposition yeah to cultivate oil palm on the degraded peatland on the degraded land not on a peatland maybe but on the degraded non-peatland which there is also no right well actually that's a that's one of the of the one suggestion that that I I propose from the study that to use more this degraded land to to to have more productive land use such as oil pump plantation for example because at the same time minister of forestry has allocated 30 million hectares of convertible forest and 10 million hectares out of these 30 million hectares actually still in the forest state I mean in this I mean they are still forested landscapes so why don't just use this degraded lands which was around 27 million hectares in 2012 to replace those 10 percent of forest landscape within the convertible forest land so yes Daya many thanks Ari for a very informative presentation I'm just wondering a lot of the arguments that have been conveyed by government and also by the private sector is actually not being able to identify large swathes of of unproductive lands in your study are there large swathes of of unproductive lands or are they fragmented across the the forest because that's that's key to them according to their argument is you need to have large you know large swathes within an area to be able to be able to use them to be able to develop these lands so yeah it's not just the location but it's the you know one place big big ones that's why they're converting you know the 30 million the convertible forest that's one of the arguments so yeah very good questions I to be honest I still need really to to do the analysis and I mean to to look at more carefully the spatial distributions of of these swathes whether they actually occupy a big chunks of area like in Sumatra they have like quite big areas or actually it's more scattered or fragmented all over the the landscapes yes but I don't have the I don't have the the answer right now sorry yeah Emika I'm just referring back to one of the recommendations that you made that you know there's all these shrub lands so why not expand on those shrub lands but I'm also finding that recommendation seems to contradict what you've said earlier about how if you were to compare the concessions with the shrub land you see that actually there's a land bank which I thought was a very interesting part of what you mentioned and then also that there are a lot of competing claims so you know while you know land might seem idle or might seem you know just shrubs or degraded there might be an entire story behind that so I'm wondering if it is possible to also attach caveats to what you've said based on your own analysis and then to then talk about what else we need to do like or what else is already happening at c4 that that looks at you know both deforestation in terms of land clearing but also in terms of land use and how we can complement the two if I don't know if that made sense but I can clarify of course it's more on on the comments I guess so sure we are still developing the paper now it's still in writing process so Julia I will contact you after this so to find a way to discussion but thank you that's that's very interesting suggestion actually yeah Christine thanks again sorry for this point but um I'm going back to size because I think size is sort of key um again so and Nia I said I presumably you're working together and so said that you know nature doesn't take care of it but of course nature does take care of small plots that are in mosaic landscapes so is this uh is this something that um is important the fact that we're seeing the big ones so we have one story whereas if we were seeing smaller ones we'd have another story you know also um Dai you mentioned people want great big areas they need big areas for big development and that's what we classify sort of as getting productive um I mean I'm trying to be sort of slightly provocative here but it's there's something about you know using certain tools that I think do yield a particular story but don't yield another story but um maybe size is something that we do want to focus on the size of the of the size of changes and potentially the size of changes back you know where where nature at least seems to take care of some things thank you Christine so um the the thing is that um we use these uh data at national scale so national datasets which was unfortunately it has a uh is a relatively big um size of the minimum areas can be identified as something something could be forest something could be shrubs something could be sifting agriculture and so on I didn't say that the the small scale um areas convert to shrubs or a sifting cultivation is not important of course it's also important but due to the limitation of datasets that we have that we use for the study we we cannot really analyze and identify those very detailed um activities at the very local level so I didn't say that it's not important a small scale but um yeah but it's it's it's the data that we use and the data that we have and it's um it's apparently it's an official data very interesting because um I don't think that so far no one has has done it besides for uh ministry of forestry use it for for national reporting and statistic and forestry studies and so on but the deeper analysis is they really rely on us the c4 scientists to to work on and to do more analysis of applying those data okay any further questions all right well thank you all for coming and thank you Arif for for a very interesting seminar um and let's give Arif a round of applause