Papua, the Indonesian province with the largest forest coverage, can play a vital role in initiatives to reduce carbon emissions from the land sector, says Sonya Dewi, World Agroforestry Centre Indonesia coordinator.

“As of 2013, forests in Papua cover 31,687,680 hectares of land, which is equal to 27 percent of total primary forest coverage in Indonesia,” said Dewi.

She was speaking at a workshop that was reviewing progress on 2 projects: Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation by Civil Society on Land-use Planning for Low Emissions Development Strategy (ParCiMon); and Locally Appropriate Mitigation Action (LAMA-1).

The ParCiMon project was designed to support Papua in achieving its low emission development targets as part of its contribution to the national climate change mitigation strategy.

“The project is focused on developing the capacity of civil society to be able to participate in the planning, monitoring and evaluation process of land-based low emission development activities.”

The LAMA-1 project aims to help local administrations in formulating good land use planning as a solution to realizing low emission development.

During the workshop, participants discussed successes to date with the projects, such as reforesting critical land and rehabilitating sago palm, as well as lessons learned.

Read the full story: Papua has huge potential in emission reduction: Experts