Saving Indonesia's trees: REDDY at last CLIMATE-CHANGE talks in Doha this week opened in a mood of pessimism. But one cheering announcement punctured the gloom: that Indonesia's government had formally approved the country's first project under the "REDD" scheme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation). Indonesia is one of world's big emitters of carbon, largely because of logging. REDD, to which Norway has committed $1 billion for Indonesia, pays developing countries not to chop down trees. In this project, known as Rimba Raya ("infinite forest"), forest in Borneo the size of Singapore will be preserved. Against the odds, it will not be turned into one of the vast palm-oil plantations that are eating up so much of the country. Investors in the project, which include Gazprom, Russia's huge gas producer, and Allianz, a German financial-services giant, will receive about 104m credits over the project's 30-year life, each representing a tonne of averted carbon emissions. At current market rates, these would be worth some $500m. Money will be ploughed back into projects in the area - clean water, health, microcredit, ecotourism and so on. All this is good news for orang-utans, an endangered species. Several hundred have fled the encroaching oil palms to take refuge in a national park, Tanjung Puting, next door. There, a centre run by Biruté Galdikas, a famous primatologist, rehabilitates orang-utan refugees. They should now be able to return to the wild. Rimba Raya seemed about to go ahead in 2010. Then it stalled and, at one point, the government said its area would have to be cut in half, rendering it unviable. The problem was that, to qualify for REDD, there has to be a real threat to the trees. In this case there was: a big palm-oil company had overlapping concessions, which it has only just agreed to relinquish. Forestry management in Indonesia has long been riddled with corruption. Even well-meaning Indonesian officials doubt whether REDD can match the money that timber and palm-oil barons can offer. That Rimba Raya has persisted and won is a tribute to the tenacity of its promoters. But their experience raises a hard question. If a project with so much in its favour finds the going so hard, what hope is there for others?