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The government wants to calculate for itself how much carbon is contained in the nation’s forests instead of relying on foreign data and methods.

“All this time, we have been depending on developed countries to count how much our carbon stock is. This is not good, because how will we learn to rely on our own resources?” said Hadi Daryanto, director general of forest production at the Ministry of Forestry.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, carbon stock is the quantity of carbon contained in a “pool,” meaning a reservoir or system that has the capacity to accumulate or release carbon. Greenfacts.org says it is to the amount of carbon stored in the forest ecosystem, mainly in living biomass and soil, but to a lesser extent also in dead wood and litter.

Hadi said the ministry was preparing to issue a regulation detailing a carbon-counting methodology — covering measurement, reporting and verification — for the forestry sector based on research by Indonesian scientists.

The methodology would be applied to peatlands, people’s plantations ( h utan t anaman r akyat ), production forests, and other land. It would count carbon stock in vegetation above and below ground.

“One of the ways to store carbon is to plant trees, and that’s why it’s important that we control our carbon stock” from planting activities, Hadi said. “This will also help concessionaires predict how much investment they can get in the carbon market.”

He said the proposed methodology was less complicated than that of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The regulation stipulates that concessionaires are expected to submit their reports based on the methodology, referred to as MRV, from Thursday until the end of October. Verification can be done through an independent accreditation organization.

“They will have to submit their MRVs to the ministry every year and they will be delivered to the MRV national coordinator at the Environment Ministry as forestry’s voluntary contribution on reducing emissions under the UNFCCC,” Hadi said.