Forest law enforcement conference opens in Bali

Forest law enforcement conference opens in Bali

DENPASAR, Bali (JP): A three-day East Asia Regional
Ministerial Conference on Forest Law Enforcement and Governance
(FLEG) was officially opened here on Tuesday by Director General
for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation Wahjudi Wardojo.

The first day's session, which was closed to the media, was
also attended by Tom Walton of the World Bank.

The first two days of the meeting will consist of technical
discussions where nongovernmental organizations and
representatives from the private sector will participate, while
the third day will be ministerial, conclude with a statement of
political commitment for action at the national and regional
level, the organizing committee said.

On the eve of the conference, activists from various NGOs,
including NADI, Greenpeace, Telapak, Forest Watch, JIKA and AMAN,
held a joint media briefing here, urging that the government
immediately impose a moratorium to all industrial-scale tree-
felling activities in Indonesia.

The activists warned, should the government fail it would not
only cost the country its already heavily damaged tropical
forest, but it would also cause some US$7 billion in losses and
make hundreds of thousands of people unemployed.

"We predict that the forest in Sumatra will be completely
destroyed in the next five years, Kalimantan's forests in the
next 10 years and Irian Jaya's forests in the next 15 years
unless the government has the courage to carry out the moratorium
policy," Longgena Ginting of the Indonesian Environmental Forum
(Walhi) said here on Monday.

Through the moratorium, arbitrary tree-felling could be halted
for a certain period of time, during which the government would
launch an extensive forest rehabilitation program, restructure
the forestry industry to make it more efficient, he said.

At the same time, the government also had to provide
alternative sources of income for thousands of forestry workers.

"China's moratorium policy caused one million workers to lose
their jobs, but 500,000 of them were later employed in state-
funded forest rehabilitation projects and another 250,000 were
hired as forest security officers," Ginting said.

Ginting identified widespread corruption, illegal tree-felling
and excessive demand for timber as the prime causes behind the
destruction of Indonesia's forests.

The forestry industry needed 100 million cubic meters of
timber each year. Official records show that Indonesia's forests
supplied 21.4 million cubic meters of timber, some 21.9 million
cubic meters of timber were imported to meet the industry's
demands.

"So there was a gap of some 56.6 million cubic meters between
the supply and demand. This gap has triggered wide-scale illegal
tree-felling," Ginting said.

Current data showed that Indonesia had lost 72 percent of its
natural forest so far. Indonesia's rate of deforestation had
reached 2.4 million hectares per year, one of the highest in the
world.

Furthermore, illegal tree-felling has destroyed 56.6 million
cubic meters of forest per year, while forest fires have claimed
10 million hectares between 1997 and 1998 alone.

"There is no doubt that our forest is in a very critical
situation, the only viable solution is a moratorium," Ginting
stated.

Latest records published by the Ministry of Forestry indicate
that Indonesia now has only 66 million hectares of productive
forest left. (zen)