3. National Baseline
3.1. Summary of the FREL Establishment
In 2014 Indonesia started development of national forest baseline named FREL. The FREL was designed as a baseline reference for assessing the results of REDD+ implementation in Indonesia, toward performance-based result-based payment of REDD+.
In December 2015, during the COP 21 in Paris, Indonesian National Focal Point (NFP) submitted the FREL and was officially accepted by UNFCCC Secretariat by 4 January 2016. Following the submission, the FREL went through the process of technical assessment (TA) by UNFCCC Secretariat, and successfully completed the assessment in November 2016. The FREL 2016 is therefore named the National and 1st FREL of Indonesia, as later explained in the Annex I-A of Ministerial Decree 70/2017 on REDD+.
Indonesia National FREL was developed by a team of national experts representing various specialties from cross-ministerial agencies and diverse organizations including NGOs and universities, which was commissioned by Ministry of Environment and Forestry of Indonesia, as NFP for UNFCCC. The role of national experts provides advantages in ensuring the sustainability of REDD+ implementation and the continuous improvement of the REDD+ monitoring and emissions calculation methods. The components of the Indonesia’s FREL is as seen in Figure 3-1.
Figure 3-1. The Indonesia’s FREL.
The FREL employs principles of “transparency, accuracy, completeness, and consistency,” and also considering “practicality and cost effectiveness.” These mean that, besides ensuring the consistency and transparency while improving accuracy over times, all data and information employed in the FREL were based on existing systems that funded fully by national budget. These datasets were generated based on procedures and technologies following certain quality assurance and standards that developed and improved over time since 1990, in which allowing the technical assessment and verification. The FREL used historical land cover data as a basis and using stock-difference approach with emission factors considered as Tier 2, if not Tier 3. The FREL submission complies with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines (2006) for National GHG Inventories and the 2013 Wetland supplement to the IPCC guideline 2006.
The historical emission method was utilized to generate future projected baseline of the FREL. Averaged annual emissions applied to set future baseline for deforestation and forest degradation.
As a result of inherited emissions from peat decomposition, a linear regression equation was developed using year as predictor variable to estimate annual peat emissions over time.
FREL focused on Indonesia’s land that was covered by natural forests in 1990. It is accounted for 113.2 million ha or about 60%
of the country land. The FREL area focus on forested areas, consists of primary and secondary forest covers, instead of forest functions that legally designated for land use by The Ministry of Forestry (MoFor) (MoFor, 2014). The area of FREL presented at national scale as seen in Figure 3-2 is used as the boundary where the emission reduction would be primarily estimated.
Figure 3-2. Forest Reference Emission Level (FREL) area accounted for 113.2 million ha or about 60% of the country land
The FREL sets reference period from 1990 to 2012 as the baseline for assessing the historical emissions, meaning average deforestation and forest degradation during those periods was taken to represent the dynamic historical forest cover change and its associated emission, in Indonesia. The period selection is based on several considerations including: (a) availability of land- cover data that is transparent, accurate, complete and consistent, (b) reflection of the general condition of forest transition in Indonesia, and (c) sufficient length of time that reflect the national circumstances related to policy dynamics, socio-economic impacts, and climatic variations.
For the current submission, two main REDD+ activities are included in the FREL, i.e. deforestation and forest degradation, both on mineral and peat land (see Box 3.1 and Box 3.2 for the definitions). The inclusion of these activities for FREL was mainly due to the following reasons: (a) major contribution to the total emission from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) and (b) availability and quality of the data in the context of reliability, accuracy, completeness, comprehension, and consistency.
Box 3.1. Deforestation defi nition used in FREL 2016
The Decree of Minister of Forestry of Indonesia No. 30/2009 states the deforestation as the “permanent alteration from forested area into a non-forested area as a result of human activities”. Permanent alteration exhibits the importance of natural forest. Using the defi nition, the temporary unstocking areas followed by reforestation would not count as deforestation. This defi nition is based on the facts that in most cases in Indonesia, the natural forest cover that has been changed (cleared) to become non-forested lands, rarely grows back from undisturbed into natural forests. The cleared area would likely be utilized, and/or the process of forest regeneration following succession stages would be interrupted by other anthropogenic activities.
So that, deforestation term used in the FREL document (FREL document 2016) is defi ned as one-time conversion of natural forest cover into other land cover categories. This defi nition was taken for the sake of practicality, simplicity and clarity on data used (the land cover class identifi cation and classifi cation processes). The term was introduced in IFCA document (2008), and common term for this defi nition is “gross deforestation”.
“Gross Deforestation” in this document only counts what has been lost (natural forest clearing or depletion into non forest classes) and does not consider forest regrowth (both natural and human intervention), nor carbon sequestration that is taken up by forest regrowth. This is diff erent from “Net Deforestation” that accounts re-growing secondary forests and plantations.
Since Indonesia prioritizes on working for protecting its tropical natural forests, the REDD scheme considers only “gross-deforestation.” The
“net-deforestation” would be counted under GHG inventory and/or further development and elaboration on the “plus” of REDD.
Carbon pools calculated in the FREL are only aboveground biomass (AGB) and soil carbon in the peat land. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the gas reported in this FREL. Specific to peat land, emissions from peat decomposition are calculated in the area that has been experiencing deforestation and forest degradation since 1990. Peat emissions calculated not only at the time deforestation occurred, but it continues over longer periods until organic contents/organic peats are fully decomposed. This inherited peat emission is disadvantageous for Indonesia. Yet, the country considers to account the peat decomposition, for the sake of transparency and completeness.
Box 3.2. Forest Degradation defi nition used in FREL 2016
According to The Minister of Forestry Decree No. 30/2009, forest degradation is a deterioration of forest cover quantity and carbon stock during a certain period of time as a result of human activities.
Interpretation of the deterioration of forest cover refers to the process of forest degradation that we in practical, attach to the defi nition of degraded forest by ITTO: a natural forest, which has been fragmented or subjected to forest utilization including for wood and or non-wood forest product harvesting that alters the canopy cover and overall forest structure (ITTO, 2002).
So that, defi nition of Forest degradation used in the FREL document (FREL, 2016) leads to the change within natural forest from undisturbed/primary forest into disturbed/degraded/secondary forest. The defi nition refers to the working defi nition related to practicality, simplicity and clarity on data used (the land cover class identifi cation and classifi cation processes); It’s the area that changed from undisturbed forest into disturbed forest, in term of has been fragmented or subjected to forest utilization including for wood and or non-wood forest product harvesting, which alters the canopy cover and overall forest structure.
In general, the emissions of AGB is included for deforestation and forest degradation activities for all forest strata, while soil organic carbon is included only for accounting peatland emissions experiencing deforestation or forest degradation (drainaged) since year 1990. For the time being other pools (belowground biomass/BGB, litter and deadwood) are not included in the calculation for the time being but have been identified for further improvement. Soil organic carbon other than in peatlands is not included. More detailed information on some underlying consideration to focus on the pools included in the construction of the National FREL can be found at the UNFCCC website.