Despite Bali and Joburg, Lampung abuses forest
Oyos Saroso H.N. The Jakarta Post Bandarlampung
Certain groups in Lampung have apparently shown complete disdain for the Sustainable Development Summit that opened in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Monday as they are continuing, with the partial blessing of government decree, to loot a major part of the protected forest in Bukit Barisan National Park, due to illegal farming and logging.
An alliance of local nongovernmental organizations accused the government of "forestry crimes" since it had a lot to do with allowing a 1995 government sustainable forestry development program to be abused by many.
They said Ministerial Decree No. 662 issued by the Ministry of Forestry in 1995 to launch the forestry development program, was a good idea that called for sustainability and moderation by allowing a limited amount of planting to be done in the forest without cutting down trees over a certain size. But it was abused by many people and apparently aided and abetted by local officials.
"The decree, or at least in the way some have chosen to interpret it, has allowed forest 'squatting', causing serious damage to 60 percent of the 350,000-hectare national park," Watono Nurdin, director of the Consortium for Lampung Forest Conservation (K2HL) told The Jakarta Post here over the weekend.
Watono criticized the government for its "overprogress" in carrying out the sustainable development program by exploiting forest resources, which it was not supposed to do under the decree.
"Indonesia was actually a step ahead of the Johannesburg Summit, but Lampung's misinterpretation, or perhaps abuse, of the policy has resulted in serious deterioration," he lamented.
The provincial administration, in cooperation with the National Agrarian Agency (BPN) actually allows local farmers, through cooperatives, to utilize, in moderation, protected forests to grow certain crops in efforts to help improve their social welfare and to prevent them from cutting down trees.
"The ministerial decree, in the manner in which it was implemented, has caused serious damage to the forests and the national parks and their biodiversity. Even worse, a part of the national park has been claimed by farmers as their personal property," he said.
According to him, the ministerial decree that has been revised several times must be suspended temporarily to repair the local people's misperception on the forestry program.
According to Worlwide Fund for Nature (WWF) data, some 9,000 hectares of forests in Pematang Sawah, Tanggamus Regency, have been converted into farmland by forest squatters, in addition to the thousands of local people who have illegally settled on several forest areas in Sinarjaya, Purwosari, Srirejo, Tejomulyo, Karang Anyar and Sinar Laut.
Tugiman, chief of the local office of BPN, declined to comment on the rife forest looting in the province.
Yulden Erwin, coordinator of the Lampung Anticorruption Committee (Koak) called on the international environmental and financial organizations to be more selective in providing assistance to the government and its poverty eradication programs in the forestry sector, because they were being abused and causing serious problems for the environment.
According to him, corrupt local officials manipulated the government policy on forests to enrich themselves, and in the process caused wide swaths of deforestation.
He said many local government offices as well as the police and military had turned a deaf ear to the increasing calls to halt the deforestation, mostly due to illegal logging in national parks.