JAKARTA — Researchers have called out the Indonesian government’s claim of having reduced deforestation by 90% over the past decade, pointing to cherry-picked data and a skewed baseline that paint an incomplete picture of the reality on the ground. In a recently published report, Norwegian and Indonesian researchers at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences […]
  • Researchers say Indonesia’s claim of a 90% deforestation drop over the past decade is misleading due to cherry-picked data and an extreme baseline year.
  • The actual decline is closer to 50-69%, driven by earlier policies and reduced forest availability in many regions.
  • Deforestation is rising again, especially in Papua and Sulawesi, fueled by palm oil, pulpwood, and mining expansion.
  • Civil society groups are crucial in tracking and exposing forest loss amid conflicting government policies and rising environmental threats.

“Estimates suggest that more than 90% of tropical deforestation continues to be driven by agriculture” and yet this article fails to mention the cow in the room…

The researchers also highlighted another likely major reason for the drop in deforestation: that there’s simply much less forest left to clear. They estimated that up to a third of the reduction in the deforestation rate can be explained by this so-called forest scarcity effect.

This is an important point. Whenever you read that deforestation rates are decreasing anywhere in the world, keep this in mind. There is a reason that Europe has such low deforestation rates while tropical rainforests have some of the highest.

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