Land-Use Change and CO₂ Emissions Associated with Oil Palm Expansion in Indonesia by 2020

The expected increase in palm oil production for food and biofuels has raised large concerns about land-use change and greenhouse gas emissions. The pressure to convert land into oil palm plantations can be widely observed in Indonesia. So far, Indonesia has not been effective in protecting its land resources from this pressure largely because of the weak enforcement of its own policies. Thus understanding the opportunities to improve the policy enforcement in relation to the land resources is critical to design successful strategies for land management in Indonesia. This study simulated land-use changes in Indonesia under three policy scenarios and different projections of palm oil production by 2020. This enabled us to illustrate the effects of the improvements of the policy enforcement on land-use change and CO₂ emission triggered by the growing demand for palm oil. We projected a large increase in deforestation, ranging from 3.06 to 4.89 million hectare if no improvements are made in the policy enforcement, which would result in 194.83–499.89 Mt of CO₂ emission. Better policy enforcement can bring significant mitigation effects in terms of land-use change, as it can reduce deforestation by 50–53%. The effects of enhanced policy enforcement on CO₂ emission from land-use change is even more significant. It can reduce CO₂ emission by 84–87%. Therefore, our results highlighted that the current policies have a substantial potential to protect land resources against the growing pressure on land conversion from palm oil plantations in Indonesia. In order to make such existing policies effective, the government must put considerable efforts on the proper and unconditional enforcement of the policies.