Fueling forest for food

October 17th, 2011 | Posted by iip in Forest - (0 Comments)

Debating biofuel as promising commodity has been months. Some scientits argued that biofuel is not eco-friendly as alternative fuel. Inline with this, recent news of BBC talks about doubt of leaders on biofuel development.

The leaders are Bolivian President Evo Morales and President Alan Garcia of Peru. They warned biofuel development could harmed poor people. In the other hand, UK Prime Minister said that “UK should be more selective in our support for biofuel”

Biofuel development threats forest in tropical area, such Indonesia. Studies link oil palm plantation expansion with deforestation. In fact, it happened in Sumatra and Kalimantan mineral soil, as well as the peat soil. However, producing biodiesel from unsustainable oil palm plantation is unfavorable. (more…)

Affordable food

October 14th, 2011 | Posted by iip in Energy - (Comments Off)

I agree with argument on the development of biofuel threatening Indonesia food security. It happen mainly through land conversion. In the next decades, biofuel crops will dominate agricultural land and decreasing forest land.

Today I read a 2006 publication on agricultural land conversion. It says that the accelerating rate of conversion of agricultural lands in mainly caused by very low incentives to work in agriculture compared to industrial and service sectors. I try to link it with biofuel development. (more…)

Deforestation and C02 emissions

September 22nd, 2011 | Posted by iip in Forest - (Comments Off)

As experts says, deforestation is estimated to be responsible for around 20 percent of all human-induced CO2 emissions. Most of this effect being happen in tropical forest. However this figure is highly uncertain. According to 2007 GTZ report, the reasons are:

  • There is a notorious lack in reliable forest inventories.
  • the ascertainment of deforestation depends on the diverging definitions of forests
  • Greenhouse gas emissions from forest degradation (i.e. vegetation loss inside a standing forest) are difficult to estimate, and there is no single accepted definition of it Re-growth after deforestation
  • N2O and CH4 emissions due to forest fires have not yet been quantified on a global scale, but they contribute in a significant way to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

What do you think? Should we give priority to avoiding deforestation?

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