Confusing and conflicting regulations are scaring away investors from Indonesia's fledgling forest carbon credit scheme aimed at curbing deforestation, lawyers said on Monday.

Indonesia may cut subsidies for fossil fuels and introduce policies requiring state electricity firm PLN to use renewable energy sources for part of its supply within a year, a senior environment official said Monday.

Ranked the world's third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in a 2007 World Bank report, Indonesia is considered a key player in the fight against climate change.

Organised crime syndicates are eyeing the nascent forest carbon credit industry as a potentially lucrative new opportunity for fraud, an Interpol environmental crime official said on Friday.

Peter Younger, an environmental crimes specialist at the world's largest international police agency, was referring to a UN-backed scheme called reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.

Carbon credits derived from a fledgling forest conservation scheme for developing nations will struggle to compete with palm oil as an investment, industry advisers and conservationists said on Friday.

A commitment by six Asia-Pacific nations to protect a huge swathe of ecologically rich coral reef is an important step, although the pact is non-binding and key details still need to thrashed out, conservationists said.

Southeast Asia's biologically diverse coral reefs will disappear by the end of this century, wiping out coastal economies and sparking civil unrest if climate change isn't addressed, conservation group WWF said on Wednesday.

More of Indonesia's critically endangered orangutans are being caught for the pet trade now than in the 1970s, reflecting the country's weak law enforcement, a wildlife protection group said in a report published on Thursday.