Conflicts between locals and timber companies to grow

JAKARTA (JP): Conflicts between local communities and timber companies will likely increase in the future because the people are now more aware of their rights, a senior government official said on Wednesday.

Director general of production forestry management Soegeng Widodo said the government saw a growing tendency of land disputes between locals and timber companies, adding that it was believed these disputes were in large part driven by social disparity.

"We need to increase law enforcement and to push regional governments to prevent any destructive activities," Soegeng said during a break in a hearing with House of Representatives Commission III for agriculture and food affairs.

According to media reports, 50 forest concessionaires holding some 10 million hectares throughout the country have halted operations due to land disputes with local communities.

Although Soegeng was unaware of this recent development, he said the government would investigate the validity of the locals' demands and determine whether timber companies were illegally operating on the land.

"We'll study whether the land they're claiming really belongs to them," he said.

He acknowledged that local communities were not solely responsible for the conflicts, saying timber companies might also be ignoring the needs of the local communities or using locals' farmland without offering fair compensation.

According to data from the government, the majority of the logging operations in the country are owned by relatives or associates of former president Soeharto. These people allegedly obtained their forest concessions through their close ties with the authorities.

These concessionaires often included farmers' land in their logging areas without compensating the owners of the land. The fall of Soeharto and the ensuing democratic changes in the country made local communities more aware of their rights.

The government has just begun to study why local communities are increasingly confronting timber companies over their forest concessions and engaging in illegally logging, he said.

"My guess is that social jealously is also behind this trend," he said.

He said locals who derived no economic benefits from the logging could easily be angered when outsiders came onto their land and took control of vast areas of their forests.

The Indonesian Loggers Association reported last month some 77 loggers in East Kalimantan threatened to halt work in response to continued conflicts with the local community.

Soegeng admitted that mistakes could occur in granting forest concessions to timber companies.

He also said illegal logging was on the rise. According to data from the World Bank, over 30 million cubic meters of timber were harvested illegally in Indonesia from 1997 to 1998.

Soegeng said the forestry ministry had yet to calculate how large the illegal logging problem was and how much the state had lost as a result of the practice.

He said local communities did not view their logging as illegal because they felt it was their right to harvest from the surrounding forests.

Furthermore, he said the demand for logs had outgrown the supply, causing a yearly shortage of 29.3 million cubic meters, which prompted an increase in illegal logging.

Soegeng also said the self-assessment method used to supervise the transportation of timber encouraged loggers to manipulate the data.

To ease conflicts and illegal logging, the government has obliged forest concessionaires to employ locals and undertake community development projects, Seogeng said.

He said forest concessionaires also were told to offer stock options to locals each time they renewed their concessions.

The government also will take action against those parties who damage the forest for profit, he said.

He promised to step up the supervision of logging activities by establishing inspection posts along strategic transportation routes. (bkm/07)