House urged to drop new forestry bill

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi) urged the House of Representatives (DPR) on Friday to drop the forestry bill which was believed to continue exploitation of natural resources if enacted.

Walhi chairwoman Emmy Hafild said the bill was substantially similar to the 1967 Law on Forestry Management, which treated forests as natural resources that should be exploited.

"Damage to our forests across the country will worsen if the bill is passed into law," she told The Jakarta Post Friday.

Emmy said the bill, which was slated for deliberation by the House some time in mid-August, had yet to stipulate the public's ownership on forests, their participation in forest rehabilitation and nongovernmental organizations'(NGOs) participation in forest conservation.

"The law should recognize indigenous peoples' ownership of forests where they are living. They have owned the forests long before the Indonesian state was established," she said, adding that ownership should be not divided only between the state and concessionaires, but should also include the tribes living inside and near the forests.

Yanto, a member of House Commission III for forestry and agriculture, concurred and said that his Golkar Party faction was coordinating with others for a major revision to the bill in compliance with input and new ideas from third parties concerned with forest conservation in the country.

"We want the bill to include clauses stipulating that industrial forests for timber production, protected forests and national parks should not be converted into other functions," Yanto said, citing many forests in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi were converted into oil palm plantations.

He said that the bill should also limit the number of forest concessions given to timber corporations to avoid any further damage.

"The new government should be stricter in issuing the forest concession rights to prevent damage to forests from worsening," he said, while adding that a major part of forests in Kalimantan and Sumatra were deforested due to excessive exploitation and fires over the last decade.

He said forest management should comply with the law on fiscal balance, which gives authority to the local administration along with their legislatures, to manage their own natural resources, including forests.

Meanwhile, Emmy suggested that the House should also initiate the deliberation of a "major" bill on natural resources to avoid sectoral egoism in law making, as well as to protect the whole ecosystem.

"It is quite strange that each part of natural resources has its own law, while the laws on spatial zoning, environment, plantation, forestry and marine resources have been established without coordination among the related parties," she said.

She said that the deliberation of the forestry bill should wait until the establishment of the 1999-2004 DPR, if the current House fails to enact the major law on national resources. (rms)