The Threat From Trees.(Cover Story: Who Is the Greenest of Them All?; SPECIAL REPORT)(Indonesia)

Byline: Thomas Lovejoy; Lovejoy is president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment.

Global warming isn't just a problem of cars and smokestacks but of the chain saw, too.

Indonesia scores a whopping zero on the green index for forestry.

The phrase "carbon emissions" usually conjures images of coal-burning power plants or smog-enveloped cities. Less widely appreciated is the role of trees as a source of emissions. When a tree dies or a forest is cut, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. This simple fact presents a big environmental challenge (and an opportunity). Whereas the two biggest carbon emitters, China and the United States, have coal plants and cars to blame, the No. 3 culprit--Indonesia--produces 85 percent of its carbon emissions from forests.

Indonesia's magnificent dipterocarp forests, a hardwood valued for its timber, have been in retreat for decades. They're almost entirely gone on heavily populated Java. In the 1990s, Sumatra lost 35 percent of its forests and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) lost 19 percent--much of it lowland forest rich in iconic creatures like the Sumatran rhinoceros and the orangutan. In the forestry component of Yale and Columbia's Environmental Performance Index, Indonesia comes in last with a score of zero. (Brazil, more infamous for rain-forest destruction, scores an 82.)

Although much of the loss was initially due to harvesting for timber and forest products, particularly plywood, in recent decades illegal logging has been more widespread. The rapid spread of oil-palm plantations is a relatively new threat. Palm oil has recently been recognized as a source of biofuels. From 1990 to 2005, 56 percent of the expansion in oil-palm plantations in Indonesia occurred at the expense of biodiversity-rich forests. Another disturbing trend is the conversion of peat forests, which hold huge amounts of carbon, into plantations by international companies, China's Asia Pulp & Paper principal among them. Once the forest is cut, the peat dries out, releasing its carbon and raising the risk of ...