LETTER Does Indonesia’s REDD+ moratorium on new concessions spare imminently threatened forests? Sean Sloan, David P. Edwards, & William F. Laurance Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science (TESS) and School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland 4870, Australia Keywords Additionality; forest; forest carbon; Indonesia; moratorium; peat; REDD+. Correspondence Sean Sloan, School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, McGregor Rd, Cairns, QLD, 4870, Australia. Tel: +61 (0)7 4042 1835. E-mail: sean.sloan@jcu.edu.au Received 9 December 2011 Accepted 7 March 2012 Editor David Lindenmayer doi: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00233.x Abstract In May 2010, Indonesia signed a $1-billion partnership with Norway to reduce deforestation and prepare for a global REDD+ scheme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation). A pillar of the pact is a morato- rium on new agricultural and logging licenses in ∼535,294 km 2 of species-rich dryland forest and ∼153,984 km 2 of carbon-rich peatlands. A critical ques- tion is whether these moratorium areas constitute ”additional” conservation. We test whether dryland forests and peatlands within moratorium areas differ from unprotected forest and recently cleared forest on a range of biophysical, economic, and agricultural attributes indicative of forest threat. Compared to other forests, dryland moratorium forests are significantly more marginal eco- nomically, less physically accessible, more removed from forest disruption, and more sheltered from encroachment, such that their ”conservation” achieves little additional prevention of forest loss and carbon emissions. Peatland mora- torium areas are, however, a conservation success insofar as they are indistin- guishable from unprotected peatland and encompass the majority of remaining peatland area, much of which is vulnerable to future conversion. Introduction Indonesiais the world’s third largest emitter of green- house gases, largely because of the widespread felling and burning of its rainforests and carbon-rich peat-swamp forests (PEACE 2007; Miettinen et al. 2011). In an effort to slow forest disruption and resulting greenhouse gas emissions, Indonesia and Norway signed a landmark pact in May 2010, hereafter termed the ”Partnership” (Sol- heim and Natalegawa 2010). This Partnership will pay In- donesia up to U.S.$1 billion for advancing forest-emission reduction initiatives over 2 years. Most of this $1 billion will be paid upon the implementation of a provincial pi- lot program yielding verified reductions in forest-carbon emissions, whereas a key longer term goal is to ready Indonesia to benefit from international carbon markets (Solheim and Natalegawa 2010; Edwards et al. 2011a). With the release of Presidential Instruction No. 10/2011 on 20 May 2011 (Yudhoyono 2011a), Indone- sian President Yudhoyono has indicated how the coun- try plans to protect its forests. This Instruction outlines a moratorium on new logging or agricultural conces- sions (including oil-palm and paper-pulp tree planta- tions) in primary dryland forests and peatlands. In July 2011, it was accompanied by 291 maps outlining the spe- cific forests protected under the moratorium (Ministry of Forestry 2011a). These ”moratorium forests” have been set aside with a view to drawing funding from the Part- nership in the short term. Over the longer term, the moratorium aims to support Indonesia’s goal of reduc- ing national emissions by 26% by 2020, and to prepare Indonesia to draw payments from industrial nations via the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme. REDD+ payments are intended to safeguard threat- ened tropical forests by providing economic incentives for continued forest integrity (Venter & Koh 2011). To merit such payments, newly protected forest should en- compass imminently threatened areas or otherwise serve to reduce overall rates of forest emissions over relatively Conservation Letters 0 (2012) 1–10 Copyright and Photocopying: c  2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1