During the Bonn Challenge in South Sumatra on 9-10 May, the South Sumatran governor, Alex Noerdin, officially presented his provincial green growth plan to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
The green growth plan is an umbrella strategy for the government and other actors to further support forest landscape restoration. IDH supports both the South Sumatra and other provincial and district governments in developing and implementing the plan. The private sector, especially the palm oil, pulp and paper, as well as rubber sectors, have been closely involved in the green growth planning and will be crucial actors in the execution of the plan’s strategies.
“South Sumatra being the host of this high level meeting is yet another way the province demonstrates itself as a front-runner, working towards meeting its pledges not just to the Bonn Challenge, but also other targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals.” said Desi Kusumadewi, IDH’s Senior Program Manager for Palm Oil.
During the event, representatives from the ten provinces of Sumatra Island signed a joint declaration of commitment to implement the green growth plan.
“It was very encouraging to see the ten governors committing to work towards Green Growth of Sumatra, going beyond a single province. This is very good news for the future of Indonesia” she added.
As a subset of the green growth plan, in South Sumatra, IDH collaborates with the district government of Musi Banyuasin and other partners such as the private sector to pilot green growth activities, including forest and peat restoration as well as increasing productivity of oil palm smallholders, in the district.
The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030. Underlying the Bonn Challenge is the forest landscape restoration (FLR) approach, aiming to restore ecological integrity at the same time as improving human well-being through multi-functional landscapes.
To date, 40 governments, alliances and private sector organizations have committed over 148 million hectares to the Bonn Challenge.
Pledgers to the Bonn Challenge benefit from its design as an implementation mechanism for multiple international commitments, including the Sustainable Development Goals, Aichi Biodiversity Targets and Land Degradation Neutrality Goal, among others.
As the first Asian country to host the Bonn Challenge since its launch in 2011 in Bonn Germany, Indonesia is making good progress towards achieving its targets.
Besides South Sumatra, IDH currently collaborates with governments of West Kalimantan, Jambi and Aceh provinces in developing green growth plans.