Global Deforestation

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) for securing this debate. It is a really important issue, which looms large over us.

I want to talk about one specific project that could be absolutely devastating for the global climate and biodiversity. We always talk about the Amazon, but the world’s third largest rainforest is on the island of Papua, in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. A huge shadow looms over Indonesia’s forests. We have seen recent media coverage in the British, Indonesian and international press about an initiative that has been described as the world’s largest deforestation project. That project, backed directly by the Indonesian Government, is targeting 3 million hectares of moist tropical forest, dry forest, mangrove and wetland for conversion to huge commercial rice and sugar cane plantations in the district of Merauke, West Papua. That is an area one and a half times the size of Wales—or, as there are so many Members, including myself, with strong Yorkshire connections, three Yorkshires. Similar projects in Borneo and Sumatra are threatening orangutans, tigers and other critically endangered species.

Battalions of soldiers from the Indonesian military have been deployed to clear land and quell resistance from local and indigenous communities, many of whom strongly oppose the project but lack the rights and means to protest. West Papua, in particular, is a highly militarised territory, which is effectively under military occupation and rule. Community leaders who object face violence and intimidation in a landscape already marred by a conflict that is now 60 years old. The communities are also not even being recompensed properly for the land. There are reports that some communities are being forced to sell concessions within the state plantation for £5 an acre. The value of the timber alone should make the land worth many hundred times that.

Indonesia has a long history of failed mega-projects. Similar mega-projects failed in the past because draining wetlands makes the soil more acidic and farming more difficult. Once cleared, vast stretches of forest are abandoned and burned, as we have previously seen in the Amazon. Indigenous people rely on natural forests for hunting and gathering, and burn waste wood for cooking, so the practice increases malnutrition and disease, and affects the whole lifestyle of indigenous people.

From an environmental point of view, the project will destroy globally critical habitats, triggering irreversible ecosystem degradation on a vast scale. It is estimated that this one project in Papua will release an estimated 782.5 million tonnes of additional CO2, which is equivalent to a carbon loss valued at £2.1 billion. That means that the Merauke food and energy estate alone could more than double Indonesia’s emissions.

Like the UK, Indonesia is signed up to the Paris agreement and COP, as well as to the CBD protocols. The astonishing impact of the project threatens to completely undo any progress Indonesia has made in reducing deforestation and undermine the UK Government’s efforts to help the country to drive down forest loss and meet its climate targets. Some 10,000 hectares of land have already been destroyed, but that is a minute amount compared with what we could see.

Where does the UK come in? In November 2024, the UK and Indonesian Governments agreed to work together in on new strategic partnership, which they stated is designed to provide

“a framework, grounded in the principles of mutual respect and cooperation, to deliver the full potential of our relationship”.

The partnership will engage

“our respective businesses, academia and research institutions, cultural organisations and wider societies.”

In addition to having closer political, economic and societal ties, Indonesia is an important partner for the UK in advancing our shared global climate commitments, particularly with regard to the protection of forests. Through programmes such as the forestry, land use and governance programme, the UK is working with Indonesia to address deforestation and promote sustainable forest management to combat climate change. The work is critical and has contributed to a significant decrease in deforestation since 2020. I pay tribute to the former Minister Lord Goldsmith, with whom I have discussed this matter many times, including at COPs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brent West mentioned schedule 17 to the Environment Act 2021. When it is finally implemented, it should ensure that products that contain palm oil or cocoa that have been grown on recently deforested land such as Merauke—palm oil and cocoa could well end up being grown there, because the land is not at all suitable for rice growing—are not sold in the UK. That is the intent behind schedule 17, and its implementation is long overdue.

My hon. Friend also made the point that responsibility for this matter sits across a number of Departments, but as we are in a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs debate, I will address my questions to the DEFRA Minister. Given the new partnership framework with Indonesia, and the UK’s status as a respectful but critical friend of Indonesia, do the Government intend to provide technical analysis, advice and support to help the Indonesian Government to find ways of meeting the country’s food and energy needs that do not require setting off such a climate time bomb as the Merauke project? Given the UK’s global forests agenda, its leadership role in the Glasgow declaration, and existing trade partnerships, does the Minister believe this is an opportunity for the UK Government to take diplomatic action regarding this colossal project, given not just its implications for deforestation but its devastating impact on indigenous communities?