Climate deals turn up heat in Indonesia's dark peatlands

Science has long known that Indonesia's 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of dense, black tropical peat swamps, formed when trees, roots and leaves rot, are natural carbon stores, explained University of Nottingham peat expert Professor Jack Rieley. "They are 50-60% carbon. Peat stores more carbon than all of the planet's vegetation combined," he said. Now the dots have been joined between peatlands and the massive amounts of climate change-related carbon emissions they release when burnt or drained to plant crops such as palm oil.

Years of lucrative deforestation for timber and palm oil plantations has entrenched the practice of burning vast areas of Indonesian land, smothering neighboring Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei in annual choking smoke clouds, known as haze. Now, in a sudden reversal, keeping Indonesia's forest cover intact is a hot investment ticket in a warming world. Already, investors are knocking on doors in towns close to peat swamps, such as Palangkaraya, in Central Kalimantan. Emissions cuts from forest areas such as peatlands are not yet eligible for trade, because they were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol's first, 2008-2012, round. But many predict they will be in six months' time, after the UN climate meeting in Bali hears a report on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation

As home to 60% of the world's threatened tropical peatlands, and among the world's top three carbon emitters when peat emissions are added in, Indonesia is in the spotlight. But stitching up peat swamp carbon deals without involving local communities risks raising real tensions, said Jutta Kill of FERN, the Forests and the European Union Resource Network. "Because the focus is narrowly on keeping the carbon stored, the incentive to police is increased," she said from Britain. "In Uganda, people have been shot at by forest rangers to defend carbon forestry projects." This kind of market-led carbon trading is not the only way to safeguard forest carbon, she said. "Northern countries could do a lot by not pushing deforestation through (expanding) palm oil and biodiesel (developments)".

- This is an interesting development, from the point of view of someone who lives in one of the countries affected by the annual Indonesian haze. It could get even more interesting if big money moves into this carbon trading thing.

See the highlighted portions above - one can imagine shooting wars between rival factions, one interested in burning the forests to grow palm oil, the other interested in defending the forests to protect billion-dollar carbon credits. Gives a new meaning to "resource wars", doesn't it.

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