Donors criticize forest handling, but no action taken

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia's donors have expressed their disappointment over the country's failure to protect its forests, but they stopped short of taking any action to force the government to meet its commitments on illegal logging.

The donors' working group on forestry issued a statement during the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) meeting in Bali that the government had failed to resolve the country's forestry crisis.

The working group attributed the failure to the lack of integrated efforts by related government's agencies in dealing with the problem.

"The lack of an active, inter-agency forum is regarded as one of the principle reasons why there would appear to be little change in the 'business as usual' scenario," says the statement.

"It has to be a functional forum, not one in name only, in order to tackle illegal logging and the cross-sectoral issues that are part and parcel of the crisis being faced in the forest sector."

Arbi Valentinus from Telapak forestry, a non-governmental organization, criticized the donors for an apparent lack of resolve to take significant action requiring the government to deal effectively with its forestry problems.

Arbi said that the donors's criticism alone would mean nothing and would not stop illegal logging in Indonesia.

"Donor countries should do more than just raising criticisms as it means nothing if there is no consequence to the disbursement of the loans," he said.

Donors grouped in the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) pledged an additional loan of US$2.7 billion during its meeting in Bali on Tuesday and Wednesday.

CGI, however, failed to tie the loans to the government's earlier promise to protect the country's forests.

During a CGI meeting in 2001, the government promised to do a lot of things to protect Indonesia's forests, including restructuring forest companies, closing down ineffective companies, imposing a moratorium on the exploitation of natural forests and stopping illegal logging.

Arbi said the donor countries should have evaluated those commitments in order to know why Indonesia failed to implement them.