The scientists claim that this policy can cause a considerable deforestation.
The scientists warn that an excessive increase in the funds of the state support for the biofuel producers can lead to a social conflict and to a massive deforestation.
Joko Widodo, the President of the country, elected the previous year, launched a campaign aimed at the reduction of the prices for automobile fuel. The campaign has been mounted in attempt to stop the financing of car-owners, which helped eventually save up to 13% of the federal budget. In money terms, this sum amounted to 22 milliards of dollars. It was planned to direct the released fund towards such needs as the education improvement, the public health and the assistance programs for the indigent Indonesians.
But a month ago the authorities announced their intention to direct a great deal of these means towards the development of the Indonesian field of the biofuel production, which uses palm oil and sugar cane as raw material. According to the declaration of Sahid Sudirman, the Energy and Mineral Resources Minister, the total sum of this action grant will amount to 19, 4 billions of rupees, which exceeds sixfold the past year expenses. The purpose of the program is to increase the biofuel quota at the domestic market and to boost the production of palm oil, which currently suffers from a fall in prices for oil.
Nonetheless, the ecologists claim that these measures are seen by many as a backward step in the Indonesian energy policy.
Zenzi Suhadi, the founder of the Indonesian Ecological Forum, declared that this upheaval in financing will increase the amount of deforestation, which has already reached its record level due to the expansion of the plantations for the palmaceae growing.
"The on-going plan of the financing policy change must give the government stimulus which can urge strategic decisions on resolving the environmental problems by means of using the renewable energy sources such as the sun and the wind", declared sir Suhandi.
The production of palm oil is the main factor that causes the Indonesian forests disappearance. Unfortunately, the exploitation of peatland and forestland as plantations provokes conflicts between the local population and the corporations.
The cane sugar growing hardly affects the forests but this crop is excluded from the national moratorium upon the expansion of the areas under crops, which also can produce a disastrous result. For example, Menara Group Company has already proceeded to the deforestation of about a half of the forests in Aru region in order to obtain the plantations for sugar cane growing.
Presently Indonesia holds the first place in the deforestation rate in the tropics.
