The ever-informative REDD Monitor has covered our Climate Defenders Camp in Indonesia today, with lots of detailed information about the peninsula, the local communities that live there, and the policy debates which are swirling around them:
The Kampar peninsular includes about 700,000 hectares of land mainly covered in peat swamp forests and mangroves. Most of the peninsular has been handed out in a series of logging concessions since the 1970s. Companies have cut canals through the peat to help extract the timber. Although logged, the forests retain high biodiversity. Surveys by Scale Up indicate that 33,000 people depend on the Kampar peninsular’s forests for their livelihoods. The communities have strong ties and customary rights to the land.
