In the Media
$30m Sumatra forest deal in doubt after concerns over funding
May 15, 2012
The Sydney Morning Herald
THE future of a much-vaunted $30 million Australian project to protect Indonesian forests for their carbon is in doubt after an independent review found it is not the best use of the money. The project on the island of Sumatra was announced by Labor in early 2010 to international fanfare, but so far there has been little detail about the project’s design. It is understood there has been no actual on-ground work in Sumatra and officials to date have done research only.
It is the second Australian-Indonesian carbon project to face setbacks. The Herald reported in March that a $47 million project to restore peatland in Kalimantan, launched in 2007, had quietly been scaled back and was suffering major delays.
The independent review was handed to the government early last year, but was only made public by the Australian overseas aid agency AusAID in recent weeks. It calls for the ”reconsideration” of the Sumatra pilot in light of the challenges and delays in the Kalimantan project and the emergence of other Indonesian forest schemes, including a $1 billion investment by Norway.
Please click here to read the original news item.
Keywords: Asia, Indonesia, Kalimanthan, pilot project, project, REDD, Sumatra