Government intensifies forest protection ahead of CGI talks

JAKARTA (JP): Coordinating Minister for the Economy Rizal Ramli said on Friday that the government would step up measures to protect the country's tropical rain forests ahead of a key donors meeting next month.

Rizal said that forestry conservation had been a major issue at last year's Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) meeting in Tokyo.

"If we don't make preparations, this will become a serious problem at the upcoming pre-CGI meeting," he told a press conference following a meeting with the Interdepartmental Committee on Forestry (IDCF).

Indonesia's major sovereign donors and institutions are grouped in the CGI, which last year pledged more than US$5 billion in loans.

The pre-CGI meeting of donors representatives in Jakarta will be held on April 23-24, prior to the CGI meeting itself in October or November, the venue for which has not yet been decided upon.

Rizal said that the measures that must be immediately implemented included heavier sanctions against illegal logging and smuggling, preventing regional governments from being overeager in issuing licenses for logging, and making preparations for forest-fire prevention and containment.

Rizal said that the sanctions against illegal loggers had been relatively weak in the past and this had only encouraged more illegal logging.

"We have asked the Attorney General's Office, the police and the Ministry of Justice to take tougher action," he explained.

Rizal said that in a bid to help curb the smuggling of Indonesian logs overseas, the IDCF team would undertake a study to quantify the actual losses suffered by the country from such smuggling.

"Many of our logs are smuggled to Malaysia and China," he said.

He also said that the IDCF team would conduct a study to identify how much forest land should be protected from logging in each province and district.

"In the current circumstances, the regional administrations are very aggressive in issuing licenses for logging activities. This is highly dangerous," he said.

He added that the IDCF would announce in major newspapers every three months which provinces or districts were suffering the most from illegal logging.

Rizal also explained that fighting forest fires was very important because the country was suffering around US$4 billion in losses due to the problem annually.

He said that with the El Nino weather phenomenon expected to make itself felt again soon, the forest fire problem would become more serious.

"We'll announce the hot spots to the public," he said.

Elsewhere, Rizal said that the government was holding discussions with a German creditor to ease the debts of private forest concession holders worth some US$23.6 million in return for turning some forests into conservation areas.

"If this works, the scheme will also be applied to other foreign creditors," he added.

He said that another program was to consolidate the country's plywood industry, which was believed to already be suffering from overcapacity, exceeding the ability of the country's forests to supply the necessary logs.

He added that the government would also require indebted forest concession companies under the stewardship of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) to come up with forest conservation management strategies as a condition for the restructuring of their debts.(rei)