Indonesia Vows: We Will Be Ready For Results-Based REDD Payments By End Of 2016

11 December 2014 | LIMA | Peru | After announcing his country’s reference levels for forests and deforestation earlier this week, Heru Prasetyo, head of Indonesia’s REDD+ Agency, BP REDD+ (Badan Pengelola REDD+), said their system is advanced enough to begin measuring performance for results-based REDD+ payments by the end of 2016.

“By the end of 2017, Indonesia will be operationally and institutionally ready to implement its payments-for-results agenda,” said. “Right now, we’re developing the infrastructure, doing payments for performance, but by 2016, we promise our people and the world, that we will be earning payments for results in REDD+.”

He recapped in detail the successful implementation of programs that he outlined in an interview earlier, and expressed confidence that the reference levels submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be approved. He added, however, that the reference levels do not include carbon pools that have less certainty, and he stressed that more data would be forthcoming as the certainty surrounding those pools increases.

The actual reference level documents won’t be posted online after the climate talks end, but Nur Masripatin, the Deputy of Governance and Institutional Relations for BP REDD+, said they would include both deforestation and degradation, taking into account development policies in the future, and will include all forests that were still standing in 2000, including carbon-rich peatland forests.

“The data is quite traceable,” she said, reiterating Prasetyo’s confidence in the findings. “When the result is assessed, we can explain it.”

She said the country at one time had up to 14.9 million hectares of peatland forest, but the calculation includes just 8 million because of certainty reason on data availability and its associated emission estimates for the rest that had been deforested prior to 2000.

The submission, and Prasetyo’s vow, cap a massive undertaking that required pulling disparate data from several sources and making sure it was consistent across the country.

“There is so much data from different regions and institutions, and checking consistency was challenging,” she said. “Also, it was difficult getting different institutions to work together.”

Prasetyo says he’s confident the country can now follow up with emission-reductions, in part because BP REDD+ has worked with authorities at all levels of government. Prasetyo says he’s confident the country can now follow up with emission-reductions, in part because BP REDD+ has worked with all levels of government.

“The reference levels are at the national level, but REDD+ has to be implemented at the grassroots level,” he said. “We developed a protocol for how the national and provincial and district and village levels work together in terms of achieving this.”

That protocol currently covers 59 districts in 11 forested provinces, ensuring that all participants will be “an orchestra that will sing together at the village, district provincial, and national level.

“Otherwise what we’ll get is just a collection of projects, and REDD+ isn’t just a collection of projects,” he said. “It’s an agenda of reform, an agenda of government, and an agenda of doing the right thing for the people who depend on it.”