goodmorningpapua.com – The palm oil moratorium provides an opportunity to evaluate licens to restore the function of protected forest areas.
In the case study of West Papua, this evaluation of palm oil licenses has the opportunity to support the Manokwari Declaration’s target of realizing a protected forest area of 70 percent of the total area. Currently, the area of protected and conservation forests in West Papua reaches 34.8 percent of the total area.
With the evaluation of the licenses, the protected forest area can be increased to 62 percent. Forests in Tanah Papua are important to be saved from oil palm expansion. This is because Papua and West Papua are provinces that have the largest forest cover in oil palm plantations in Indonesia.
In Papua, there are 1.3 million hectares and West Papua has 404,000 hectares of forest cover in oil palm plantations. On the other hand, oil palm plantation licenses have increased rapidly. In 2015, there were only 5 business permits for oil palm plantations in Papua. But in 2017 it jumped to 114 business permits.
Thus, the palm oil moratorium can actually stop the rate of granting these licenses and save forest areas.