Effective moratoria on land acquisitions reduce tropical deforestation: evidence from Indonesia

Abstract

The tropics have suffered substantial forest loss, and elevated deforestation rates have been closely linked to large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA). Having a timely and accurate understanding of global LSLA pattern will be critically important for concluding related policies and actions. Here, we investigate global LSLA networks and find that land acquisitions are characterized by dominant acquisition flows from the developing to the developed world (75.4%), and less of these flows are retained within the developing world (22.8%) or the developed world (1.8%). Policy-driven moratoria on existing LSLA are a key mechanism used to minimize global forest loss and recently employed in Indonesia, however their effectiveness remains unclear given a lack of quantitative synthesis. Based on a spatially-explicit temporal analysis of forest loss from 2001–2017, we find that, as a whole of Indonesia, the increased forest loss rate of 0.091 Mha yr−1 (2001–2011) slowed down to 0.001 Mha yr−1 (2012–2017) after moratoria established in 2011. Meanwhile, based on a comparison of annual forest loss in logging, timber, and oil palm concessions, we find that land concessions outside the moratorium experienced 35%–396% higher rates of forest loss than in comparable land concessions within the moratorium. Decreased forest loss from full implementation of moratoria on all land concessions could mitigate a maximum aboveground biomass carbon emission of 112 888 ± 24 766 Mg C yr−1, which is a nearly 41.89% reduction relative to the counterfactual scenario of no moratorium. These findings lend support for international cooperation and collective action to put into practice effective land moratoria to reverse decade-long trajectories of tropical forest loss.