Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Indonesia is defying the global trend in tropical deforestation. While forest loss in much of the tropics reached record highs in 2024, Indonesia’s rate fell by 14% compared with the previous year. Yet beneath this apparent success lies an inconvenient truth: Almost half of the deforestation recorded cannot be traced to a clear cause, reports Mongabay’s Hans Nicholas Jong. According to TheTreeMap, a technology consultancy that monitors forest change, logging accounted for 18% of primary forest loss in 2024, industrial oil palm for 13%, pulpwood plantations for 6%, mining for 5%, food-estate projects for 3%, and fires for just over 2%. Together, these explain less than half of the total. The remainder falls into a shadow zone — forest that is cleared but remains unused, often for years. Why is this the case? A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that nearly half of deforested land in Indonesia lies idle for at least five years before being converted, usually to agriculture. In Riau and Bengkulu provinces on the island of Sumatra, natural forests within selective logging concessions have been stripped and then abandoned, only for oil-palm investors to arrive years later. Environmentalists see this as a symptom of weak governance. Permits are issued liberally; concession holders face few penalties for clearing and walking away. Boy Jerry Even Sembiring of Indonesian environmental NGO Walhi calls it the result…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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