GOVERNMENT STILL DIVIDING UP THE CARBON-TRADING PIE
Fidelis E. Satriastanti
Three key government bodies were still hammering out details on Wednesday on how revenue from a United Nations carbon trading scheme would be doled out, a senior official said.
“We are just starting to discuss the mechanism so it really depends on how fast the agreement between the three can be reached,” said Nur Masripatin, director of the forestry research and development agency at the Ministry of Forestry.
The discussion brought together officials from the National Development Planning Board, the Forestry Ministry and the Finance Ministry.
She added that the group’s ultimate decision would likely end up being issued as a Ministry of Finance decree.
The Forestry Ministry in May issued a regulation on carbon trading that included an outline of how to share revenue among three tiers of government.
According to the outline, the central government would get 40 percent, provincial governments would take 20 percent and the remainder would go to district administrations.
However, Nur said the regulation had not been finalized and was only meant as a guideline for revenue sharing.
“I am sure that there are going to be changes since it is actually still under discussion,” she said.
“We mentioned the revenue sharing in the regulation because many people were asking questions about it, but we did not provide details on how to do it — just a guideline.”
This year, the ministry has already issued three regulations surrounding the UN carbon trading scheme known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing countries (REDD), which have addressed pilot projects, general guidelines for the implementation and voluntary activities. The latter involves the ministry’s revenue-sharing plan.
Nur said revenue was expected to be distributed according to the levels of responsibility. “The ones who will get the bigger shares are the ones who have the biggest responsibility,” she said. “Currently, most of the forests are owned by the local people or communities, so there will be lots of legal avenues” for them to claim the revenue.
Meanwhile, Fitrian Ardiansyah, program director for climate change at WWF Indonesia, said a lot of wrinkles still needed to be worked out in the REDD scheme, particularly on how it would be implemented from the national to district levels. He said officials should also make sure there were no conflicting regulations governing various sectors
“We want to see more policy approaches from other sectors, such as agriculture or finance, and not just coming from the forestry sector,” he said.
Another issue that needed attention, Fitrian said, was institutional arrangements. Due to decentralization, he said, the heads of districts might have a lot to say about the way the scheme was set up.
“So, we need to find solutions for better management, especially concerning the issues of who has the responsibility to manage the forests and who is going to get the revenues,” he said.