MEDIA RELEASE | Oil-palm agroforestry: a solution for two out of three of Indonesia’s ‘economic diplomacy’ issues

Nairobi, Kenya. 22 January 2020 — The Government of Indonesia has prioritized three ‘economic diplomacy’ issues in its international trade agenda for the coming years. Two of these may have a joint agroforestry solution that has so far escaped attention. Agroforestry is, put simply, trees grown on agricultural land.

The impact of the US-China trade war on the global economy and Indonesia are beyond the reach of agroforestry but the two other issues deserve to be linked.

Indonesia is the worlds’ leading producer of palm oil but it has faced difficulties in answering a number of social and ecological concerns about the rapid expansion of the oil-palm area into tropical forests.