Sumatra: Satellites & cops source worst coffee-based logging to unenforced low labor cost areas
Law enforcement efforts can significantly deter deforestation in
protected areas despite high pressure from agricultural expansion,
reports a new study that assessed the effectiveness of conservation in
Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in southern Sumatra, Indonesia.
However the research suggests that conservation needs extend beyond
law enforcement to be effective in the long-run. Using satellite
imagery, ecological data, interviews, and GIS modeling to map tropical
deforestation in and around Bukit Barisan Selatan over a 34 year
period, David Gaveau and colleagues found that law enforcement
effectively “reduced deforestation to nil” in areas where it was
undertaken.
In remote parts of the park where enforcement activities
were lax or non-existent, forest areas were rapidly replaced by
low-grade robusta coffee plantations, expansion of which was found to
be closely correlated with coffee prices. An estimated 20,000 metric
tons-circa 4% of Indonesia’s overall annual robusta coffee
production-were produced inside this national park in 2006, and were
exported into 52 countries around the world, reported the WWF in 2007.
The abandonment of the park by authorities during, and following, the
1997-1998 political crisis also resulted in increased
deforestation. “These findings indicate that law enforcement is
critical but insufficient alone, and also highlight that rising costs
of agricultural commodities can be detrimental to tropical forests,”
Gaveau, a researcher with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and
Ecology and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Indonesia Program,
told mongabay.com. “In southern Sumatra, farmers grow coffee instead
of working elsewhere (e.g. in the off-farm sector) because rural labor
is poorly compensated (around $2 per day). Therefore, higher local
prices for coffee combined with low labour costs, rather than coffee
price per se, is the synergistic underlying cause of deforestation in
Indonesia’s main robusta coffee producing region.” The authors argue
that preserving forests in Bukit Barisan Selatan over the long run
will require a strategy that reduces the incentives for coffee
cultivation. http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0122-coffee_sumatra.html