Donors criticize forest handling, but no action taken

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.