Indonesia’s forests comprises 131 million hectares, or approximately 60% of the country’s overall land area, making it the third largest area of tropical rainforest in the world after the Amazon and Africa’s the Congo Basin. Spread over more than 18,000 islands, the country’s rainforests contain high levels of endemic specifies. Despite its reputation as a global biodiversity hotspot, the country is also known as one of top three greenhouse gas emitters worldwide, with 37% of emissions due to deforestation. This combination has made Indonesia a high international priority country for forest conservation and REDD+ development activities.
In recent years, the Government of Indonesia has taken steps to curb deforestation and climate change. The national REDD+ taskforce was appointed in 2011 and helped to launch the National Strategy in 2012. National strategy implementation is currently supported by both the UN-REDD Programme and the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF).
Financing flows and institutions receiving funds committed for REDD+ activities in Indonesia:
As of 2012, the Indonesian REDD+ finance chain is depicted as fairly straightforward, with no secondary recipients receiving funding. This lack of funding transfers from first to second recipients should not be seen as a failure to implement REDD+ activities in Indonesia. In some cases, recipients may commit funding directly to local communities or households for payments for environmental services (PES) or implement the activities directly themselves instead of passing funding to other organizations. It is expected that a clearer picture of secondary recipients will emerge as additional REDDX data collection continues.
A breakdown of annual funds committed to first recipients depicts a sharp decrease in contributions from 2009 through 2011. Additional commitments picked up ever so between 2011 and the end of 2012. Overall, the majority of these commitments were targeted to Government of Indonesia as well as a public-private consortium.
The data presented below highlights levels of REDD+ financing committed and disbursed, main donors, recipients and REDD+ activities in the period between 2009 and