Indonesian proposal could redefine palm oil-driven deforestation as reforestation

JAKARTA — Across large swaths of Indonesia, forests have been cleared to make way for oil palms, making the plantation industry one of the leading drivers of deforestation in the country. But this inconvenient truth may soon be masked by a sleight being peddled by the country’s leading forestry university to reclassify oil palms as a forest crop rather than an agricultural one — effectively counting oil palm plantations as forest. The push, initiated in 2018 by Yanto Santosa, a professor of forestry at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), is aimed at allowing palm oil companies to plant i…

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