Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura – The Greenpeace ship Esperanza and its crew of activists arrived in Jayapura on Monday, beginning a two-week campaign on forest protection that is focusing on a moratorium on deforestation in Papua.

Greenpeace Southeast Asia spokesperson Bustar Maitar said the 23 activists would hold discussions, a photo exhibition and gatherings to encourage the public to help protect forests.

"Indonesia suffers from severe deforestation, with large areas of forests across the country being converted to plantation areas, such as commercial palm oil fields," Bustar said.

Bustar said Greenpeace had decided to start the campaign in Papua because the province has limited areas of natural forests that are threatened with deforestation.

The majority of forest areas in Papua are threatened with illegal logging practices and forest conversion into industrial zones, he said. Greenpeace had urged the Indonesian government and private companies to stop forest clearing, Bustar said.

Indonesia is currently ranked forth in the world after the United States, China and Brazil in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, which was largely because of forest clearing, he said.

"Prolonged destruction of forests will have a huge impact on people, cultures and biodiversity. It also constitutes around 20 percent of world's total emissions each year, worsening climate change," Bustar said.

Deforestation in Indonesia (including Papua) has been caused mainly by expansion of palm oil plantations, Greenpeace reports.

Bustar said about 600,000 of some six million hectares of land in Papua had been converted for palm oil plantation use by private investors.

He said Greenpeace hoped investors would steer away from palm oil plantations because of the negative impacts they have on the environment.

Separately, Yuven Ledang of Papua's NGO cooperation said deforestation in Papua was also caused by the country's development, since there were many new regencies there with development projects that required land.

"Tropical forests and peat forests play important roles in global climate change. If people destroy them we will all suffer because we will no longer be able to control greenhouse emissions, which will have a huge impact on the entire human race. Consequently, we need more forest areas to save the planet from the devastating impacts of climate change."

The Greenpeace team will continue its campaign to Manokwari, Kalimantan, Jakarta and Sumatra, before heading to Singapore on the same mission

They will continue to use the Ezperanza which is equipped with a helicopter to support the team in conducting aerial observations.