Sumatra, Indonesia’s second largest island, has lost much of its original forest since 1900. In response, the government of Indonesia and the international community invested heavily in more detailed monitoring of forest cover and loss using satellites.  Indeed, space-based earth observation represents a cost-effective tool to measure forest loss over a large scale, and has the potential to support a more transparent governance of Indonesia’s forests. Based on such monitoring efforts, it was estimated that Sumatra had lost some 6.7 million ha of forest from 1985-1997, representing a 29 % loss of forest cover. In turn, this led to the prediction that Sumatra would lose all its dry lowland forests by 2005.

This prediction did not, however, take account of the possible role of Protected Areas (PA) in reducing forest loss. The available forest assessments used low-resolution satellite data and unsophisticated interpretation methods resulting in coarse maps of forest cover that are unsuitable for analyzing deforestation patterns at relatively small scales within the Sumatran landscape, for example within a PA. Therefore, the available estimates of the scales and rates of forest loss within Sumatra’s PAs lack accuracy.

Underlying these concerns lies the more substantial questions of “who are the agents of deforestation?” and “what reasons make them clear more forest in Sumatra’s PAs?” The conservation community will need answers to these questions in order to recommend forest reforms to the Indonesian Government that encompass the breadth of micro and macro economic factors leading to deforestation.

Since 2002, WCS’s Sumatran Landscape project has undertaken to fill this gap of information and to disseminate results to a large audience in the government and NGO sector.

WCS Activities

WCS Indonesia Sumatran Landscape project currently:

• generates fine-scale and accurate satellite-based estimates of deforestation for all Sumatra’s PAs, districts and sub-districts. This map, covering the period 1970/90 to 2000/02 will be an important contribution to the conservation community and Government of Indonesia given that no satellite-based study has yet covered the whole of Sumatra at a fine scale.
• improves our understanding of the processes driving deforestation in and around Sumatra’s PAs by integrating the large spatial capabilities of satellite technology with in-depth socio-economic studies at the household, village, sub-district, district and provincial levels. More specifically, on the macro-economic scale we investigate the influence of a) population density, b) patterns of migrations, c) large-scale capital incentive logging, plantation and estate crop industries, d) national forestry laws, e) illegal logging, f) the 1997-1998 economic crisis, and g) the Dec. 2004 tsunami on deforestation. On the micro-economic scale we investigate the role of a) household income level, b) local perceptions on land scarcity and security of tenure, c) agricultural prices and d) conflicts over land ownership between local communities and the government on the farmers’ decisions to clear more forest.

The overall conservation goal of this project is to contribute towards achieving a transparent and accountable governance of Sumatra’s forests by disseminating our results to relevant government bodies and civil society and by recommending conservation actions that reflect the true micro and macro socio-economic conditions.