At last week's CIFOR conference, Andrew Steer (the World Bank’s special envoy for climate change) made an important point about the role of forests and plantations in Indonesia's GDP, and how the sector needs to be kept in proportion.
He said: "Forestry and oil palm are relatively small elements of the economy. Forests account for 0.7% of GDP and non-food crops – that’s all the estate crops including oil palm – at 2.1% of Indonesia’s GDP. If these sectors had not grown at all in 2010, Indonesia’s growth would have been 1/20th of one percentage point lower. So instead of being 6.1%, it would have been 6.04%"
(The full transcript of his speech can be found here.)
This is consistent with the report we published earlier this year, which pointed out that the political footprint of the forestry and palm oil sector is much larger than its real economic footprint. This was partly to refute the absurdly hysterical claim by the Chamber of Commerce (KADIN) that the forest conversion moratorium would cause an 8% reduction in GDP by 2014.
However, when the Jakarta Post reported Steer's speech, it reported his comment as follows:
“If forestry and the palm oil sector had not grown, Indonesian growth would have been one-twentieth of 1 percent, instead of the 6.1 percent recorded last year,” he said.
Which gives the impression that forestry and palm oil were responsible for almost all of Indonesia's GDP growth in 2010, which of course is the opposite of what Steer actually said. Placing the Steer comment in "quote marks" is a little misleading. Either Steer mangled his words (in which case World Bank staff should have ensured journalists were properly briefed and Jakarta Post is not to blame), or this is lazy journalism. Or else the Jakarta Post really does not understand the issues, which may be possible, given the number of times they publish Oxley's public relations efforts for APP masquarading as Op Ed.
With reporting like this, it is not surprising that the oligarchs get such an easy ride over the democratic process, and that anyone suggesting an improvement in land use management and equity is pilloried as being 'anti-development'.
Comments