Indonesia will stick to a controversial plan to open peatlands for oil palm estates as it seeks to develop the economy despite protests from green groups that this type of land conversion speeds up climate change.
The Southeast Asian country wants to maintain its position as the world's top palm oil producer as it looks to hand over degraded land including peatlands to planters, a top Indonesian government official said on Wednesday.
Peat is the accumulation of partially decayed vegetation in very wet places and burning peatland forests in Indonesia pumps large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and fans choking smoke across the region during the dry season.
But the world's No.3 CO2 emitter has set aside 8 percent of its 25 million hectares of peatlands this year that prove to have low carbon stores in a bid to control land conversions, said Rosediana Suharto, head of the Indonesian Palm Oil Commission.
"We have not issued any licenses so far because of the strict criteria like maintaining water tables and we do have a zero-burning tolerance for these lands," Suharto told Reuters at the sidelines of a palm oil conference in the Malaysian capital.
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Indonesia will stick to a controversial plan to open peatlands for oil palm estates as it seeks to develop the economy despite protests from green groups that this type of land conversion speeds up climate change.
