by Rhett Butler for Mongabay.com
Australia is ending its major forest restoration project in Indonesian Borneo, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Launched during the peak of excitement about the potential of forest conservation to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in 2007, the $47 million initiative aimed to restore 200,000 hectares of peatland that had been drained for the ill-conceived mega-rice project in the mid-1990s. The project, known as the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP), would have re-flooded that area by blocking off drainage canals, planted some 100 million trees, and protected 70,000 hectares of carbon-dense peat forest. It expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 700 million metric tons over 30 years.
But the project faced challenges from the start due to approval delays and objections from local communities and officials. KFCP was eventually scaled back to just 10 percent of its original target in terms of the area to be reflooded. Meanwhile a sister $30 million project in Sumatra was canceled completely.
This excerpt from a news article appeared in and is courtesy of Mongabay.com and can be read in its entirety at http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0703-kfcp-to-end-ausaid.html#ppFpsMGzcXZT9RLx.99
