Biological Conservation 223 (2018) 129–137

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Biological Conservation
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon

Have Indo-Malaysian forests reached the end of the road? T

Alice C. Hughes
Centre for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The Indo-Malaysian region harbours some of the highest diversity globally, yet it is also has the highest rates of
Biodiversity deforestation. Furthermore some countries have shown up-to a 10 times increase in the area deforested annually
Conservation between 2001 and 2014. Large-scale forest clearance is preceded by the growth of road networks which provide
Deforestation a stark warning for the region's future as many of the roads established for clearance or infrastructure are illegal
Forests
and unmapped. In some regions almost 100% of roads were previously unmapped on the global roads map, yet
Indo-Malay
Infrastructure
99.9% of deforestation occurs within 2.5 km of these roads. In Borneo the majority of plantations are on an
Oil-palm industrial-scale averaging over 10 km2 in size, whereas most of the region typically has plantations under 1 km2
Plantations integrated into a landscape mosaic, though the preliminary infrastructure for industrial plantations are being
developed in parts of the region. Within the coming decade most of the region may lose almost all unprotected
forests. As some countries have only 2% of their land-area protected this condemns many of the regions endemic
species to extinction. Urgent measures are needed to protect a much larger proportion of remaining forest, as this
offers the only means to protect many of the regions endemic species.

1. Introduction (Indexmundi Malaysia, n.d.) by 173%. The export of palm-oil is also

The Indo-Malayan region represents a global biodiversity hotspot
(Mittermeier et al., 2011), straddling the complex transition between
Sundaland and Wallacea with multiple zoogeographic divides
(Simpson, 1977; Rueda et al., 2013). However, this region has been
highlighted not only for its' diversity, but the rapid rates of deforesta-
tion which in 2012 became the highest rates of loss globally (Achard
et al., 2014; Stibig et al., 2014) and represents a major threat to the
continued survival of many species (McCallum, 2015; Margono et al.,
2014). Despite a moratorium on industrial deforestation in large parts
of Indonesia in 2012 deforestation has continued to increase in recent
years (de Vries et al., 2014) accounting for 61% of all Southeast Asian
deforestation (Stibig et al., 2014), with 86.7–90% of deforestation
classed as illegal of dubious legality (Lawson et al., 2014). Timber
sourcing has also transitioned from predominantly selective logging in
to conversion into plantations, which has been facilitated by the permit
regulation system (Mukherjee and Sovacool, 2014; Indarto et al.,
2015)).
Global demand for cheap palm-oil, with 84% going to Europe (30%)
or Asia (54%) in 2015 (Atlas of Economic complexity, n.d.) and with
83% of this coming from Indonesia and Malaysia has fueled the con-
version of forests to plantations (Media Atlas, n.d) Growing demand has
been matched by exponential increases in oil-palm export, with export
Indonesian and Papuan exports (Indexmundi Indonesia, n.d.) increasing
by 437.4% between 1999 and 2016, and Malaysian exports increasing
dominated by illegally grown oil-palm (80–87%), as is pulp and paper
production, with the two largest companies APP and APRIL (jointly
responsible for 75% of the industry) showing “questionable legality” in
77% and 47.5% of conversions respectively (Lawson et al., 2014), these
figures are similar to other studies for example Gellert (2015) found
only 20% of plantations had been permitted by the Ministry of Forestry.
Other studies have shown that at least a quarter of clearance falls
outside government leased concessions (Gunarso et al., 2013) (though
some of this may be legal small-holder clearance), and an estimated
90% of oil palm plantations in Kalimantan derive directly from for-
merly forested areas (Carlson et al., 2013a, 2013b). There is also no
reason to expect these trends to change, as Indonesia plans to increase
production to 42 million tons by 2020 (Jakarta Post, 2017), and further
increases are expected after this point.
As global demand for these commodities continues to increase, this
has been matched by the further loss of primary habitats and the my-
celia like growth of roads across the region. Most global analysis
overlook the development of these road networks, and their implica-
tions for the future of the regions biodiversity, and former studies (i.e.
Ibisch et al., 2016) still class most of the region as “undisturbed”, with
extensive distances from road networks. This metric for “intactness” has
also been utilized elsewhere (i.e. Newbold et al., 2016), thus such
changes must be accurately accounted for to assay both direct loss and
fragmentation, and to assess the vulnerability of regions in close
proximity to roads to other forms of exploitation (i.e. hunting).

E-mail address: Achughes@xtbg.ac.cn.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.04.029
Received 3 December 2017; Received in revised form 12 April 2018; Accepted 20 April 2018
0006-3207/ © 2018 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
A.C. Hughes
Understanding where roads are, and what percentage are included
in global datasets is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, road
data indicates the areas most vulnerable to development in the near
future, and though of course rivers can also provide access to forest for
logging and other forms of utilization, analysis shows that roads ac-
count for almost all deforestation. Furthermore, like Ibisch et al. (2016)
increasing numbers of global analysis are likely to make use of global
datasets to assess threats to biodiversity and generate conservation
priorities. For example Newbold et al. (2016) denote much of the Indo-
Malaysian region to be relatively biotically intact, yet the data used to
develop these assessments included only sparse biodiversity data from
the region (Newbold et al., 2015) and used “proximity to the nearest
road” to assess vegetation intactness. Given that these landscapes have
been converted for agricultural production, they maintain low human
populations, and thus the assumption that the global road dataset is
complete and accurate for these regions provides a misleading assess-
ment in many areas potentially at greatest threat. Though privately
owned road maps may exist for parts of the region, and previous re-
search has mapped roads in some areas (especially Borneo i.e. CIFOR,
n.d.; Gaveau et al., 2014), these are likely to be both inconsistent in
their reliability, and unavailable for large parts of the region; thus
understanding the accuracy of global datasets is crucial to under-
standing and interpreting the reliability of the increasing numbers of
analyses which make use of such datasets to inform conservation
prioritization. Here we determine percentage of roads are unmapped in
standardized global datasets and the percentage of deforestation which
has taken place in close vicinity to these growing road networks, and
discuss the future prognosis for the regions biodiversity.
2. Material and methods
The study region was chosen as based on remote sensing forests are
visually and spectrographically similar enough for consistent mapping
of roads across the region under study, further north (in other parts of
Malaysia and Indonesia) it is well established that forests have been
lost, and spectral differences make delineating roads consistently more
challenging. Given the level of development in Northern Wallacea we
focused on less urbanized parts of the region, and those where Oil Palm
rather than pulp paper (i.e. Sumatra) have been stated to be the main
tree crop (Gaveau et al., 2016), to attribute what proportion of defor-
estation can be accounted for by agricultural (primarily oil palm) pro-
duction. This region was extended East to encompass all regions po-
tentially at risk for oil palm production, hence extending as far as the
Solomon islands as the extreme East of the Wallacean Archipelago.
Thus this paper focuses on areas either at risk, or likely to become at
risk of Oil Palm production in the near future, and where governance in
addition to other pressures is likely to determine what proportion of the
region remains protected, and what regions are likely to be converted
(Fig. 1).
2.1. Mapping roads
OSM Roads (Open Street Map: a global map of roads) were down-
loaded (BBBike, n.d.), and merged to create a road map for the Indo-
Malaysian region. Though OSM is known not to include all roads in
some parts of the world, it is still used in global analysis (i.e. Ibisch
et al., 2016), and therefore understanding spatial biases in road in-
ventory completeness is key to the interpretation of such maps. Fur-
thermore, many countries do not make national road maps widely
available, and no national road maps for this region are openly avail-
able. This may stem from a fear of scrutiny on the rapid development of
this infrastructure in formerly forested regions.
Across the Indo-Malay region 149 squares of 1866 km2 each (cov-
ering a total of 277281 km2, and spaced 55 km apart vertically and
70 km apart horizontally) were mapped out (Fig. 1). This method was
used to give representative information on the area covered by roads
130
Biological Conservation 223 (2018) 129–137
without needing to map every road in each part of the region (which
would have been time and resource intensive, and should yield the
same result). Imagery data (using ESRI's image-server, n.d) and recent
deforestation was used to manually map the presence of all roads lo-
cated within each grid at very high resolutions (Fig. S1a–3b). These
“unmapped roads” were appended to the OSM data, and the level of
road inventory completeness ascertained. Primarily this approach was
used because ESRI's imagery data has a much higher resolution than
landsat imagery, (30 cm vs 30 m), thus this allowed the identification of
roads which are likely to be invisible using landsat data. As ESRIs
imagery data can be inconsistent in acquisition date this was cross-
checked with the 30 m resolution deforestation data from Global Forest
Watch to assay the deforestation of linear features.
Once all roads within the 149 grids were mapped out the total
percentage of roads included in the OSM dataset was calculated.
Following this the centroid of each grid was created and used to cal-
culate the minimum distance to road using the original OSM dataset,
and our mapped grid maps.
2.2. Deforestation
Area of forest and area deforested within each grid cell and at dif-
ferent proximities to formerly mapped and formerly unmapped roads
were analysed. Deforestation data was downloaded from global for-
estwatch (30 M resolution), and forest data was provided by CRISP
(Miettinen et al., 2016). CRISP data was not available for PNG, thus
Crowther et al. (2015) tree density dataset was used to calculate the
area of forest within countries and protected areas. These datasets were
selected as they reliably delineate between different landcover, in-
cluding tree-cover types. Hansen et al.'s (2013) dataset accounts for
deforestation in a consistent and reliable way, but afforested areas are
almost certainly converted into plantations of economically important
trees. Though Hansens deforestation data may include some areas of
plantation which have been cleared and replanted during the study
period the extent of this is only likely to really be an issue in some of the
older plantations in peripheral areas of Borneo, and given the chal-
lenges of accurately mapping forest relative to plantation make this
challenging to separately analyse in a robust and comparable way
without potentially high regional bias. Delineating the minimum den-
sity needed to qualify as “forest” is also challenging, especially with
densely planted oil palm plantations a primary driver of forest loss, so
the complementary utilization of all three datasets allow deforestation
and forest coverage to be more accurately calculated. Roads (all roads,
and OSM roads) were buffered at distances of 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000
and 2500 m. Deforestation occurring each year within each buffer dis-
tance was calculated.
2.3. Protected areas
The efficacy of protected areas was also calculated to determine the
levels of deforestation within protected areas (Protected Planet, n.d) in
states and countries across the region. Protected area maps were first
dissolved, to prevent issues from overlapping protected area designa-
tions (Deguignet et al., 2017). Though the World Database of protected
area maps may be incomplete these were cross-referenced with locally
sourced maps from institutions in Indonesia and Malaysia, and found to
largely be in agreement; thus the World Database of protected area
maps (https://www.protectedplanet.net/) were used for consistency,
and all protected areas included in the database used as the basis for
assessment.
2.4. Mapping plantations
To explore the relationship between roads and oil-palm plantation
establishment plantations established between 2001 and 2014 were
mapped out by assaying if large contiguous deforested patches had been
A.C. Hughes Biological Conservation 223 (2018) 129–137

Fig. 1. Grids of roads across the study area. Blue lines indicate roads mapped by OSM whereas red lines indicates roads mapped in this study. (For interpretation of
the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

replaced with plantations using high resolution imagery. All deforested Table 1
areas were given a constant value (as formerly the cell value was the Percentage of all roads which were mapped previously or in this study in dif-
year or clearance) and cellsize was converted from 30 to 100 m to ferent districts and countries. Mapped refers to OSM roads only whereas “un-
eliminate very small patches. Deforested patchsize was calculated, and mapped” also includes all roads mapped during this study.
“small” fragments removed (under 100 m). These plantations were then Locality %unmapped %mapped
individually verified using high resolution imagery data to determine if
the area was now under plantations, and only blocks which were clearly Gorontalo 97.20 2.80
Irian 79.99 20.01
oil palm plantations were retained based on visually inspecting high Kalimantan 74.63 25.37
resolution (upto 30 cm resolution) ESRI imagery retained. Inspection of Maluku 79.24 20.76
this data also highlighted the development of industrial housing com- Sabah 86.64 13.36
plexes in Halmahera, which would not have been possible without the Sarawak 90.55 9.45
Sulawesi 66.45 33.55
utilization of imagery data to verify the cause of forest loss.
Kalimantan_Barat 83.78 16.22
For Borneo and some other parts of Indonesia plantations have been Kalimantan_Selatan 74.63 25.37
formerly mapped. As the plantations in this study were only mapped if Kalimantan_Tengah 89.44 10.56
they resulted from deforestation since 2000, and many of the other Kalimantan_Timur 88.89 11.11
maps include all plantations; we first extracted areas which had already Kalimantan_Utara 98.06 1.94
Sulawesi_Barat 100.00 0.00
been deforested prior to the start of the study analysis period in 2000
Sulawesi_Selatan 23.72 76.28
(Using the Margono et al., 2014 map of previously degraded areas as a Sulawesi_Tengah 66.45 33.55
mask), then examined the overlap between the plantations mapped by Sulawesi_Tenggara 30.94 69.06
a). Miettinen et al. (2016), b). Global forest Watch (http://data. Sulawesi_Utara 97.69 2.31
Papua 70.18 29.82
globalforestwatch.org/datasets/f82b539b9b2f495e853670ddc3f0ce68_
PNG 63.99 36.01
2) and c). CIFOR (https://www.cifor.org/map/atlas/). Overlap be- Indonesia 70.25 29.75
tween the respective datasets was then compared. Malaysia 89.05 10.95
Solomon isles 73.89 26.11

3. Results
3.1. What proportion of roads are mapped
The percentage of roads mapped within the OSM database varies
dramatically across the region, with 70.6% of districts showing over
75% of roads unmapped, and almost 24% of districts show 95–100% of
roads unmapped (Table 1; Fig. 1, Fig. S2). At a country level Malaysia
shows the lowest percentage of roads mapped with 89% of roads in
Sabah and Sarawak currently unmapped, which though worse than
Indonesia's 70.2% is comparable to that of Kalimantan (87%). The
Solomon islands and PNG are only marginally better at 73.9% and 64%
unmapped respectively.
To assess the differences between former mapping initiatives of the
roads in this study, and those in other studies a direct comparison was
made between my road maps and those of CIFOR in Borneo. 55% of
CIFOR maps followed the exact routes as those shown in this study
(including 2% of OSM maps) and 40% of roads mapped in this study
directly overlaid CIFOR maps. This measure is not perfect, due to slight
offsets between the two maps, combined with differences in the timing
and accuracy of the imagery data used to inform both sets of analysis;
however direct comparison of the two datasets show that the two sets of
analysis largely follow the same routes in most areas, with the excep-
tion of small side-roads in some areas, roads mapped in this study are
available in a Fig. S3 and can be compared with those available on the
TRACE website (https://www.cifor.org/map/atlas/) and downloadable
from CIFOR (https://data.cifor.org/api/access/datafile/928?gbrecs=
true).
3.2. How does the average distance to road vary when all roads are
included?
The average distance to road dropped from 21.34 km to just 6.28 km
(29.4% of the OSM distance; Table 2). At a country level Malaysia
shows the greatest change in distance to roads once all roads were
mapped, with the average distance decreasing to only 3.6% of OSM
distances, whilst PNG changes the least with distances halving (48.5%)
when all roads are added (21 km OSM to 10.2 km). Kalimantan Tengah

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A.C. Hughes Biological Conservation 223 (2018) 129–137

Table 2
Distance in kilometers to grid centroid based on OSM and all roads at different regional divisions. Grids refers to the number of grid cells within each regional
division. “Sula” refers to Sulawesi, and “Kali” to Kalimantan, countries which were not analysed at a regional level (Papua New Guinea and the Solomon islands) are
only listed in the “country” division. Papua includes both Indonesian provinces within Papua (Papua and Papua Barat). UM refers to formerly unmapped roads
(mapped within this study).
Division Name Grids OSM_MEAN OSM_MAX OSM_STD UM_MEAN UM_MAX UM_STD %

All All 149 21.34 106.03 18.86 6.28 55.89 10.39 29.4
Country Indonesia 95 23.40 106.03 20.37 5.80 55.89 10.02 24.8
Country Malaysia 14 12.87 31.71 9.67 0.46 1.64 0.54 3.6
Country PNG 39 21.03 62.17 16.76 10.20 50.90 11.98 48.5
Country Solomon isles 3 10.09 12.45 2.10 3.00 4.32 1.52 29.8
Region Gorontalo 1 16.92 16.92 0.00 0.06 0.06 0.00 0.0
Region Irian Jaya Barat 11 20.00 61.46 17.35 3.48 12.17 4.54 4.5
Region Kali_Barat 8 17.95 59.38 24.12 1.19 3.22 1.04 1.0
Region Kali_Selatan 2 8.15 16.24 11.45 1.03 2.02 1.41 1.4
Region Kali_Tengah 11 29.39 106.03 30.53 0.82 2.62 0.84 0.8
Region Kali_Timur 9 29.88 62.41 22.83 4.39 27.95 8.91 8.9
Region Kali_Utara 7 31.53 42.57 12.66 7.69 18.23 7.28 7.3
Region Maluku Utara 1 19.44 19.44 0.00 0.32 0.32 0.00 0.0
Region Maluku 6 10.39 24.18 8.56 3.35 17.65 7.03 7.0
Region Papua 26 30.84 69.69 18.93 13.55 55.89 14.78 14.8
Region Sula_Selatan 5 3.56 11.03 4.38 1.34 2.59 1.10 1.1
Region Sula_Tengah 5 14.59 24.63 10.77 2.76 11.15 4.77 4.8
Region Sula_Tenggara 2 9.19 17.70 12.04 2.76 4.82 2.91 2.9
Region Sula_Utara 1 20.61 20.61 0.00 0.03 0.03 0.00 0.0
Region Sabah 4 9.23 24.06 10.34 0.60 1.56 0.68 0.7
Region Sarawak 10 14.33 31.71 9.55 0.40 1.64 0.51 0.5

showed the greatest change (29.4 km with OSM to 0.81 km with all Table 3
roads) when regions with more than one grid were considered. When Percentage of deforestation falling within 2.5 km of a road in different
all roads were considered the distance dropped dramatically in almost districts.
all areas, at least halving in all cases but one and 37% of cases reducing Region % deforestation within 2.5 km
to under a tenth of the formerly estimated distance.
Sulawesi_barat 47.98
Papua 49.55
3.3. What proportion of deforestation occurs in different vicinities to roads? PNG 59.70
Maluku_utara 65.84
Overall 87% of deforestation is within 2.5 km of a road, 74% within Maluku 65.85
1 km and 60% within 500 m, only Papua and PNG fail to show this Sulawesi_utara 74.52
Irian_jaya 79.04
relationship with only 54.6% of their deforestation falling within
Solomon islands 84.83
2.5 km of a road (only 16.4, and 24.4% of the land area respectively Kalimantan_tengah 88.95
falls within 2.5 km of a road). This is in part because the road network is Kalimantan_barat 90.33
so extensive in most of the region, covering an average of 43.8% of Sulawesi_tengah 91.01
grids. The proportion of deforestation at different distances from roads Kalimantan_timur 92.64
Sulawesi_selatan 93.57
remained largely consistent between 2001 and 2014 (Fig. S4), and even Sarawak 94.41
regions show only slight differences (i.e. Sabah shows very little de- Kalimantan_utara 94.57
forestation within 50 m of the road as this forest had already been Sulawesi_tenggara 96.47
cleared; Fig. S4). Sabah shows the highest proportion within 2.5 km Gorontalo 96.66
Kalimantan_selatan 97.55
(99.94%), though 55.56% of regions also show at least 90% of defor-
Sabah 99.94
estation within this proximity to a road (Table 3). Each year there is a
fairly even proportion of deforestation within each buffer zone, though
this may be because dating the construction of roads was not possible, reserves in protecting the forest (i.e. Sarathchandra et al., 2018), many
and so though deforestation may initially be in the area closest to the of these are in areas where deforestation has already lead to the
roads, this is impossible to establish without construction dates. clearance of most easily accessible forest; whereas in much of the Indo-
Malaysian region this is not yet the case in many areas. Analysis shows
3.4. How much forest is left, how does the rate of deforestation vary spatio- that in Kalimantan, as noted in figures Protected areas are genuinely
temporally effective in protecting forest land (i.e. Fig. S5), as noted by the clear
delineation in forest outside relative to inside reserve boundaries.
Though the annual forest loss in Papua New Guinea almost doubled Though as other analyses have also noted effective protected areas may
between 2001 and 2014 (Fig. 2), it increased by a factor of almost three simply displace deforestation and increase intensity surrounding re-
in Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Solomon islands increased at over serves (i.e. see Meyfroidt et al., 2013), but explicitly and accurately
10 times their former levels. Forest cover in Kalimantan Selatan has testing this is challenging with so many potentially confounding factors.
almost halved between 2001 and 2014 (56.4% remaining: Fig. 2;
Table 4), whilst both Sabah and Sarawak lost almost 25% of their forest
cover. The greatest level of forest loss occurred in 2006, with an overall 3.5. Are protected areas effective?
average of 1.68% of all forests lost, but with Kalimantan Selatan losing
5.5% of its' 2001 forest cover, and 26.3% of regions losing between 2 As the annual area deforested has grown on average, the annual
and 4% of 2001 forest cover in 2006 alone. Though many recent ana- area deforested in protected areas has also increased, particularly in
lyses have accounted for accessibility in analyzing the efficacy of Indonesia and to a lesser extent in Malaysia.

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A.C. Hughes Biological Conservation 223 (2018) 129–137

100

95

90

85 Brunei
Percentage forest remaining

Gorontalo
Irian_jaya_barat
80 Kalimantan_barat
Kalimantan_selatan
Kalimantan_tengah
75 Kalimantan_timur
Kalimantan_utara
Maluku
70
Maluku_utara
Sabah
65 Sarawak
Sulawesi_barat
Sulawesi_selatan
60 Sulawesi_tengah
Sulawesi_tenggara
Sulawesi_utara
55 PNG
Papua
50
2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

Fig. 2. Forest loss relative to forest-cover in 2001 for all regions.

However, deforestation rates are still significantly lower within
protected areas than outside them (Table 4). Both Sulawesi and Kali-
mantan had two provinces showing rates of deforestation within pro-
tected areas at under 10% of those of unprotected areas, with Kali-
mantan Utara showing a rate of deforestation in protected areas at only
3.6% of average deforestation rates. The worst performing protected
areas were in Papua New Guinea, though these still showed half the
normal rates of forest loss, with the Solomon islands protected areas
performing only slightly better at 47% of the rate. Though we did not
use the “site-matching” approach advocated in some studies, we feel
that given that the protected areas in this region represent a subset of
all habitat types (given that the whole region was forested until rela-
tively recently) they are highly unlikely to represent the most diverse
and least accessible parts of the region (as is commonly the case else-
where). Therefore even without site-matching, given the availability of
tracts of equally accessible forest across the region, it is likely that
differences in the rate of deforestation can be directly attributed to
protection status. Protected areas included in this study include a small
number of “proposed protected areas” (6 terrestrial areas in Indonesia
(i.e. Balai KSDA Sumatera Selatan) which have been afforded similar
protection to designated protected areas as have some of the 11 pro-
posed sites within Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysia). These have been
analysed with designated protected areas, as the management is not
disclosed and their status and management appears similar to officially
designated areas.
The Solomon islands is the least well protected part of the region,
with only 2.2% of land protected. It has also shown the highest rate of
deforestation increase of any country in the region, and with forest so
poorly protected this may pose a significant threat to remaining forests,
and their endemic biodiversity.
3.6. What are the drivers of deforestation across the region
Though we cannot explicitly determine all drivers of deforestation,
and this analysis only extends as far as assaying the relationship be-
tween roads and forest loss, and if larger areas of deforestation can be
attributed to oil-palm plantations, this is indicative of some of the
drivers of forest loss, as is the growing export levels of oil-palm from

Table 4
Percentage of deforestation within and outside protected areas.
Region %loss_in_pas %lost_all_forest An_Def_Pas An_Def_all %difference

Gorontalo 1.2 9.0 0.1 0.7 13.4

Irian Jaya Barat 0.5 1.5 0.0 0.1 32.4
Kali_Barat 2.3 27.1 0.2 2.1 8.3
Kali_Selatan 7.3 43.6 0.6 3.4 16.7
Kali_Tengah 4.8 22.3 0.4 1.7 21.4
Kali_Timur 8.0 21.0 0.6 1.6 37.9
Kali_Utara 0.3 7.1 0.0 0.5 3.6
Maluku 0.8 3.4 0.1 0.3 23.3
Maluku Utara 0.8 5.8 0.1 0.4 14.6
Papua 0.4 1.1 0.0 0.1 32.4
Sula_Barat 0.8 16.1 0.1 1.2 4.9
Sula_Selatan 1.1 10.3 0.1 0.8 10.3
Sula_Tengah 2.8 9.7 0.2 0.7 29.2
Sula_Tenggara 5.6 14.4 0.4 1.1 39.1
Sula_Utara 2.5 10.0 0.2 0.8 25.3
Sabah 2.1 24.5 0.2 1.9 8.6
Sarawak 5.9 24.6 0.5 1.9 24.1
Brunei 1.1 4.0 0.1 0.3 28.7
PNG 1.7 3.1 0.1 0.2 54.0
Solomon Isles 2.4 5.1 0.2 0.4 47.4

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Table 5 datasets. Miettinen et al.'s (2016) analysis maps a much larger area as
The percentage of deforestation directly attributable to oil palm conversion plantations across the study area than that of CIFOR or in this analysis.
between 2001 and 2014 within different regions, and the dimensions of plan-
tations created. 4. Discussion
Region Number Total area Mean area %def converted
(km) (km) 4.1. Prognosis for the region
Kalimantan Barat 1496 13,458.0 9.0 56.4
Kalimantan Selatan 400 2861.6 7.2 53.1
Despite promises that governments are working to reduce defor-
Kalimantan Tengah 1218 15,181.9 12.5 65.7 estation, only 14.7% of land is protected yet 85% of the land area in
Kalimantan Timur 998 13,103.9 13.1 75.1 Borneo currently falls within concessions which can be legally cleared
Kalimantan Utara 289 3279.5 11.3 66.6 (Global forest watch commodities, n.d.; Hidayat et al., 2018). Re-
Maluku 187 253.6 1.4 24.5
gionally protection varies dramatically from only 2.2% in the Solomon
Maluku Utara 82 186.9 2.3 13.8
Irian Jaya Barat 106 330.8 3.1 23.3 islands and 3% in Papua New Guinea (PNG), to 46.9% in Brunei. Whilst
Papua 107 1042.0 9.7 30.2 PNG still has a low rate of forest loss (0.2% annually) and a vast acreage
Gorontalo 41 118.2 2.9 16.4 of forest the Solomon islands has a bleaker prognosis with a much more
Sulawesi Barat 334 730.4 2.2 46.7
limited forest area, lower protection and rapidly increasing rates of
Sulawesi Selatan 297 329.0 1.1 17.9
Sulawesi Tengah 671 1123.9 1.7 28.2
deforestation.
Sulawesi Tenggara 437 943.5 2.2 31.0 For parts of the region where logging and concession roads had been
Sulawesi Utara 25 27.5 1.1 5.1 mapped previously, our maps showed very high levels of concurrence
Sabah 1017 6812.8 6.7 61.4 (i.e. with CIFORS logging roads map), which provides strong support
Sarawak 1097 14,007.8 12.8 64.9
for the accuracy of these maps and analysis across the region. These
Brunei 82 101.1 1.2 50.0
PNG 176 710.2 4.0 9.4 growing road networks provide accessibility for other forms of resource
Solomons 37 67.0 1.8 10.3 exploitation. Most notably this includes selective logging, and hunting,
which in the Indo-Malay region also targets a vast suite of species as
pets (Harris et al., 2015; Auliya et al., 2016), medicine (Lee et al., 2014)
across the Indo-Malaysian region. Though oil-palm exports are in- and meat (Harrison et al., 2016). The increasing access to formerly
creasing annually, analyzing the proportion of deforestation within this inaccessible forest may be devastating for many species in a region
time period which can be directly attributed to conversion as the pri- where the hunting of wildlife for medicine, meat and pets represents a
mary driver of loss is more challenging. Patterns and drivers of forest major threat to a huge array of species (Hughes, 2017; Harris et al.,
loss varied across the region, with Malaysia and Kalimantan showing 2017; Shaney et al., 2017; Benítez-López et al., 2017). In Kalimantan on
the highest rate of conversion (63.7 and 61% of all deforestation) and average no point is on average more than 5.8 km from a road (and other
Papua New Guinea at the lowest at just 9.4% (Table 5). Even within studies have found that 95% of all deforestation is within this proximity
regions drivers varied dramatically, within Halmahera 7.5% of defor- to a road i.e. Laurance et al., 2002), and in Sabah and Sarawak under
estation resulted in plantations, but a further 4.8% was for industrial 0.5 km. This means that not only are native wildlife populations and
housing developments (which are likely to support plantation devel- forests fragmented, but almost all forest is likely to be relatively easy to
opment in the future). Mean plantation sizes also varied significantly, access and therefore exploit (i.e. Janssen and Chng, 2017), and such
with plantations in Kalimantan 10.5 km2 on average, and those in regions may also become vulnerable to other forms of utilization, as
Malaysia at 9.9 km2 whereas those in the Moluccas, the Solomon islands well as at high risk of imminent deforestation. Many studies have
and Sulawesi were only around 1.8km2 reflecting that Borneo has many highlighted the pervasive impact of roads on tropical systems via var-
more industrial plantations whereas much of the remainder of the re- ious secondary phenomena, from increasing probability of invasion by
gion is still dominated by local subsistence growth. Papua and PNG fell non-native species, to microclimatic and hydrological changes, fire-risk,
in between with plantations of 6.7 and 4 km2 as though these are lar- ease of access for other forms of development and exploitation, and of
gely industrial plantations palm-oil which are still in their infancy in course roadkill (Laurance et al., 2009; Alamgir et al., 2017). One of the
this region. Generally plantations near the coast were larger and older, best documented consequences of the development of roads through
though the relationship was weak and only really apparent in smaller forested landscapes is the ability to exploit wildlife populations
islands where palm-oil is not industrialised. (Clements et al., 2014), and much of Asia already has few mammals of
To test the accuracy of plantations mapped here in addition to over 2 kg outside protected areas as a direct result of overexploitation
testing with the Nature Vue imagery within ESRI LacoWiki (https:// (Harrison et al., 2016); which is of course facilitated by greater access.
laco-wiki.net) was used to verify plantation map accuracy and gave an Other tropical regions may show similar patterns (i.e. see Barber et al.,
accuracy of 96% (( ± 0.0549) with other plantations reclassified as 2014), but a concerted effort to map these roads would be necessary to
agricultural mosaic). Plantations mapped here were also compared to understand their implications for future development and facilitate the
those mapped in other analyses by CIFOR, Global Forest Watch, n.d. development of robust conservation plans in some of the worlds' most
and Miettinen et al. (2016). As plantations mapped in this analysis only diverse and threatened regions.
include those established since 2000, and older plantations could not be These results clearly show that the uncontrolled expansion of roads
easily excluded outside Kalimantan inaccuracy elsewhere may seem across the Indo-Malaysian region is a major contributory factor behind
higher than the reality due to the inability to exclude older plantations regional forest loss, though as assessing ages on many roads was not
from analysis. Overlap was highest between plantations mapped here possible calculating the rate of loss was not possible on this occasion.
and those mapped by Miettinen et al. (2016) at 63.44%, whereas those Pledges to slow the rates of deforestation in these regions have largely
mapped by CIFOR tended to be larger and only showed a 35.54% failed, with rates of deforestation found to increase during Indonesia's
overlap, though these figures are higher than those between the CIFOR most substantive action to slow deforestation (the 2012 moratorium)
and Miettinen datasets (Fig. S6). A regional breakdown of these ana- (Busch et al., 2015; de Vries et al., 2014). Further initiatives including
lyses support these patterns, with Kalimantan showing a much higher Indonesian Sustainable Palm-oil (ISPO), and Malaysia's MSPO both
level of agreement between the different datasets than regions were theoretically implemented between 2009 and 2015 have seen further
older plantations could not be screened out prior to analyses (using increases in deforestation, and have failed to provide many positive
Margono et al., 2014 to screen out areas which had been developed outcomes for biodiversity (Mukherjee and Sovacool, 2014). Interna-
prior to 2000) with upto 78.5% spatial agreement between the different tional legislation has also had relatively little impact on curtailing

134
A.C. Hughes
annual increases in deforestation, as despite the 2011 EU sustainability
criteria on oil-palm imports (Mukherjee and Sovacool, 2014) the EU
still imports 26.4% of global palm-oil ((though secondary exports
cannot be easily assessed) Media Atlas) and all proposed and enacted
legislation (i.e. Ivancic and Koh, 2016) has yet to impact substantively
on deforestation.
Many oil-palm plantations mapped and verified during this study
have not previously been mapped in other regional analyses (i.e Vijay
et al., 2016), thus the level of deforestation directly attributable to oil-
palm may have been underestimated in former studies. Furthermore
many recently deforested areas and new roads have not yet established
palm-oil plantations in the vicinity, and these can be expected to be
developed over the coming years. Close scrutiny of deforestation re-
veals a process, with logging roads being succeeded by a typical gridded
oil-palm road network before deforestation within each gridded plot.
Thus the network of roads mapped in this study in the interior of
Borneo are likely to be a prelude to further large scale clearances, as
mapped data shows that the “gridded road network” developed prior to
deforestation is already in place in many parts of interior Kalimantan
(Fig. S1) and therefore much of the “logged” in addition to intact forest
is likely to be cleared in the near future (i.e. within 5 years: Gaveau
et al., 2013). In much of the rest of the region oil-palm is still grown in
small plantations often in a patchwork of other crops, though this
pattern is starting to change in areas such as Sulawesi. Halmahera
shows a worrying symptom of industrial-scale oil-palm plantations to
come, with 4.8% of deforestation (39% of deforestation of large con-
tiguous areas) having been developed into “industrial style” housing
developments. These may be the preliminary infrastructure for in-
dustrial plantations to come, and data for 2015 shows deforestation
rates in Halmahera increased by 252.5% relative to former years
(Global Forest Watch Indonesia, n.d.).
Future land-cover projections (Austin et al., 2015; Carlson et al.,
2013a, 2013b) under the “business as usual” scenario may actually
provide a more accurate depiction of plantations which are either al-
ready established, or at least committed too; as many of these regions
already have at least some of the road infrastructure required to de-
velop oil-palm plantations.
Java represents a probable premonition for the Indo-Malaysian re-
gion, with the majority of its' remaining forest now either inaccessible
(the mean elevation of forest in Java is 1045 m asl, relative to 331 m asl
on average for Java, and a steepness (standard deviation of variation of
altitude between neighbouring 30 m altitude cells) of 115 relative to
45), or protected (at least 33.4% in protected areas). Java has a long
history of deforestation, and even in 1990 after 150 years of debating
forest protection only 7.6% forest cover remained (Smiet, 1990). With
current rates of deforestation across much of the region it can be ex-
pected that with the exception of (Papua and Papua New Guinea which
still have large expanses of intact forest) much of the Indo-Malay region
may mirror Java in the coming five to ten years as forest area halved in
some parts of the region during the study and annual clearance is ac-
tively increasing, meaning that many species risk extinction due to the
total loss of suitable habitat.
4.2. The future of regional unprotected native forest?
Annual deforestation is increasing and areas such as Sarawak have
lost almost half the forest that existed in 2000 in just 14 years and it
may be under half of this time before all unprotected forest is removed
given accelerating rates of deforestation. Many of the roads mapped in
this study have been established for the purpose of logging and plan-
tations, but those plantations have yet to be established (i.e. see Fig.
S1), thus we can expect with the use of these newly established road
networks, the level of deforestation will continue to increase. In the
short term those increases are likely to occur in areas which have the
highest percentage of unmapped roads (i.e. much of Kalimantan),
where the average distance from a road is now only 3 km (compared to
135
Biological Conservation 223 (2018) 129–137
the 23.4 km from OSM).
Indonesia's current policies does not protect the areas classified as
“degraded forest” (Edwards et al., 2012; Harahap et al., 2017;
Murdiyarso et al., 2011), and as this term can be applied to over 80% of
forest in Kalimantan, and under which clearance and conversion is al-
most mandated, despite the high value of much of this area for biodi-
versity this means that many species can be expected to lose all or most
of their suitable habitats in the coming decade, as protected areas are
unlikely to include all native species and regional endemics can be
expected to be particularly vulnerable.
4.3. Overcoming the issues?
Legislative interventions over the last few decades have failed to
curb deforestation rates, and no part of the Indo-Malay region currently
has a protected area network which was designed to protect maximum
diversity and instead it largely reflects political convenience (Margules
and Pressey, 2000; Margules and Sarkar, 2007). The current protected
area network fails to cover enough of current forest, or account for
different diverse communities across the region. Thus not only are ef-
forts needed to designate new protected areas which better cover re-
gional diversity, but actions are also needed to demonstrably limit
further deforestation across the region. In addition, legal concessions
still include substantive portions of remaining forests, including highly
diverse and carbon sequestering regions (Abood et al., 2015) and ranges
of nationally protected species (Wich et al., 2012), and remaining for-
ests within current concessions should be considered for protection.
Without additional protection due to limited area, and habitat coverage
we can expect to see high rates of extinction in species which are not
sufficiently covered by current protected areas; which includes an in-
calculable number of cryptic vertebrate species.
Europe recently instigated new regulations to prevent the import of
unsustainably sourced oil-palm (European resolution, 2016). Yet most
sustainability standards (i.e. RSPO) have been plagued by consistent
issues and tied to breaching their major policies of preventing further
deforestation (EIA, 2015; Mongabay, 2015), and as degraded forest can
be legally cleared, this renders the majority of remaining forest vul-
nerable to clearance. As regional governments directly benefit from oil-
palm export little positive action to curb these trends has been enacted.
Furthermore, through legitimising and almost mandating forest re-
moval in formerly or selectively logged forest governments also facil-
itate forest loss in diverse and almost pristine forest (Padfield et al.,
2016). Governments actively facilitate further deforestation (Sarawak
Report, 2014) and are committed to the loss of huge additional forested
areas into the future (Sarawak Report, 2014). Thus to develop and
enforce the standards necessary to avoid extensive further losses of the
regions diversity, external mediation is needed.
One of the principal issues is that palm-oil has become a cheap
additive for many products which may not even require oil. Higher
pricing based on a fixed “tax” (Carlson et al., 2012) may directly de-
crease demand for the oil, especially from uses when it is purely to
“bulk up” products. Fixed quotas based on the maximum yield of any
legal concession could also easily be implemented, and monitored
through a set regulator so that only oil-palm produced by certified
producers could be exported. Carbon implications from oil-palm pro-
duction are also not inconsiderable (Hardwick et al., 2015) and plan-
tations and nearby areas increase average air temperature by upto 6.5°
(Hansen et al., 2013). If importers were held responsible for the emis-
sions legacy for imported oil-palm then even major importers such as
China and India may start to behave more responsibly in line with their
Paris accord agreements. Satellite technology provides a means to
monitor forests in almost realtime (Kelly et al., 2005), whilst isotopic
and other forms of analysis can support tracing supply chains at pro-
gressively higher resolutions (Pirker et al., 2016). If such technology
was utilized as part of an enforceable mechanism for sanctioning ac-
tions which counter CBD (Convention of Biodiversity) and SDGs
A.C. Hughes
(Sustainable Development goals) then changing these patterns would be
possible. Furthermore these issues are not isolated to the Indo-Malay
region, but may soon also threaten other similar regions such as the
amazon which may soon follow the dubious road to destruction being
paved to make way for oil-palm here (Pirker et al., 2016; Villela et al.,
2014), and for which similar analysis is needed.
Former interventions have largely failed and despite global atten-
tion and proposed intervention deforestation rates have failed to de-
cline (Global Forest Watch Indonesia), and a continuation of current
trends will very soon see the loss of most of the Indo-Malaysian regions
un-protected forests. The roads mapped here are a precursor of further
extensive deforestation, which given the proximity of most remaining
forest to roads means the majority of regional forest will be lost.
Without international engagement to enforce responsible forest man-
agement and sustainable supply chains these regions will lose these
forests, probably driving the extinction of species requiring large
ranges, and unprotected regional endemic species. Consumer demand
and legislation within Europe already exists (South, 2016), but without
substantive action to actively combat current issues we will see the loss
of much of the regions forest, and endemic species within the next
decade, especially with the continued expansion of the road network
and further plantations which are expected across the region.
5. Conclusions
New European legislation banning the import of oil palm recently
came into force due to an appreciation of the consequences for biodi-
versity from it's continued production (Reuters, 2018). Former inter-
ventions to ensure European palm oil use was sustainable (https://
www.sustainablepalmoil.org/europe/) have failed to curb deforestation
in producing countries due to poor definitions, weak enforcement and
pressure from the government to increase Palm oil production (Austin
et al., 2017; Mongabay, 2016). Here we demonstrate the impact of the
failure to effectively implement the former zero-deforestation pledges,
resulting in the expansion of road networks across much of the Indo-
Malaysian region and increasing rates of deforestation as a result. The
consequences of this, and the expansion of oil palm production into
Indonesian islands, which formerly produced little if any palm oil, and
the development of the infrastructure needed to produce palm oil (as
shown in Halmahera) has significant consequences for the retention of
the regions forests and their unique biodiversity. Failure to act effec-
tively to control the export of palm oil and better protect remaining
forest is key to preventing further loss of habitat, and the expansion of
road networks which in addition to directly driving forest loss are also
associated with many other factors detrimental to biodiversity due to
increased accessibility of formerly remote sites and increasing frag-
mentation of natural habitats. Though the European legislation to ban
import may seem extreme, they come as a response to the repeated
failure to reduce deforestation and ensure sustainable supply chains
within the industry and thus maybe the last resort if governments in
producing countries fail to enact and enforce legislation which prevents
the further clearance of forest and growth of road networks needed to
produce increasing quantities of palm oil.
Impact statement
Within a decade one of the worlds most diverse regions is set to lose
almost all unprotected forest, potentially driving multiple extinctions.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.04.029.
136
Biological Conservation 223 (2018) 129–137
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