ASSESSMENT ON TREE PLANTING EFFECTIVENESS TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emission problem is nowadays an international issue that tends to grow more and more important worldwide. It is also a national concern of which Government of Indonesia has taken a number of important mitigation and adaptation measures to counter the issue. However, at municipal or local level, mitigation and adaptation strategy is occasionally ineffective due to the lack of inventory data and bias scenario. Therefore, appropriate and effective mitigation measures are enormously important to improve the local strategy to reduce the greenhouse gas emission. The objective of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of tree planting to reduce greenhouse gas emission generated by a metropolitan municipality, namely Depok, located in West Java Province, Indonesia. The local emission reduction scenario consists of three measures, i.e. tree planting, reduction of municipal solid waste generation as well as reduction of electricity consumption. Greenhouse gas emission quantity was calculated according to the general classification of the sources, i.e. energy sector, AFOLU (agricultural, forest land and other land use) sector as well as solid waste sector. The total greenhouse gas emission during 2011 was estimated about 1.1*107 ton CO2-e whereas the total sequestered carbon by one million trees planting program was merely 5.2*103 ton CO2-e per year. Reduction of greenhouse gas emission by 5% solid waste generation and 5% electricity consumption were about 2.0*104 ton CO2-e and 4.5*104 ton CO2-e, respectively. The result of the analysis indicated that if effectiveness of one million trees planting scenario to reduce greenhouse gas emission is scored as one (1), then the effectiveness of GHG emission reduction by 5% solid waste generation reduction could be scored as four (4) and the effectiveness of those by 5% reduction of electricity consumption would be scored as nine (9). Furthermore, GHG reduction measure by one million trees planting would reduce no more than 0.05% of total municipal GHG emission. It indicates that a choice of local greenhouse gas emission reduction strategy should be based on a comprehensive inventory data, rather than based on any popular action of local authority.