Indonesia may lose its natural forests in 15 years

Indonesia may lose its natural forests in 15 years

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia is facing a severe depletion of forest
resources and may lose its natural forest areas within 15 years
if no strong commitment is given by the government and private
sectors to practice sustainable forest management, experts have
said.

Indonesia's natural forest areas fell by a dramatic 48 million
hectares to 92.5 million hectares in 1999, from 140.4 million
hectares in 1970, according to data from the Indonesian Forestry
Community for Reforms.

Head of the planning office at the Ministry of Forestry and
Plantations Moch. Toha said natural forest areas in Sumatra,
Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Irian Jaya had depleted rapidly in the
last 13 years, with an accumulative average loss of 1.6 million
hectares per year.

He said the fast pace of the permanent disappearance of
natural forest areas was partly caused by the flawed policies of
past governments.

"The government emphasized economic growth more and it
propelled the exploitation of forest resources, especially
timber, to help generate revenue," he told the post-Consultative
Group for Indonesia (CGI) meeting on Indonesian forestry last
week.

The government has since 1967 allocated no less than 60
million hectares of forest areas as forest concessions, among
which obligations are to conduct a selective cutting and
replanting system to ensure sustainable management.

The government then increased the exploitation of industrial
forests in the late 1980s in order to provide raw materials for
the country's rapidly growing pulp industry.

By the end of 1998, no less than 600 forest concessions,
including those for industrial forests, operated on some 67
million hectares forest areas, producing raw materials to supply
the country's annual demand of over 70 million cubic meters of
timber for wood and pulp industries.

Toha acknowledged that the economic growth-oriented policy had
led to the failure of the government to force concession holders
to manage the forests and their businesses in a sustainable way.

Dayu Pradnja Resosudarmo of the Center for International
Forestry Research shared Toha's views, saying that a large number
of concession holders had routinely violated the regulations due
to the lack of control and law enforcement from the government.

"They have overharvested, damaged the residual tress and
conducted logging outside their cutting areas," he said.

He said the massive harvesting and overlogging was partly a
result of the fact that timber concessionaires had to provide
more raw materials for the country's wood and pulp industries,
which had so excessively grown that they demanded more raw
materials than the forests could naturally provide.

The country's wood and pulp industries multiplied their annual
production capacities to reach 3.9 million tons in 1998 from only
605,900 million tons in 1988. These industries need about 70
million cubic meters of timber per year, while the natural
forests, using sustainable management standards, could only
produce about 20 million cubic meter a year.

Dayu said the deforestation in the timber concession areas had
been made worse because the concession holders had no intention
of properly replanting the areas.

Toha said in order to curb the deforestation rate the
government had intended to uphold law enforcement and minimize
the natural forest conversion.

Official data estimates that 60 percent out of about 48
million natural forest areas which disappeared in the last 30
years were converted into commercial plantations, industrial
sites, agricultural expansion areas and new settlement or
transmigration sites.

No less than 2.8 million hectares of natural forest areas were
converted into oil palm plantations alone by 1988, from only
300,000 million hectares in 1980.

The World Bank has accused Indonesia of failing to comply to
the International Monetary Funds' guidelines on the reduction of
land conversion targets and being ineffective in reducing illegal
logging.

"Forest conversion, as well as illegal logging, is even
occurring in areas where major donor countries to the forest
sector, such as Japan, World Bank and the European Union, are
supporting the forest conservation," the international
organization said.

The World Bank said donor countries were seriously worried
about the way Indonesia managed its natural forests.

The country's forest management will be the main issue in the
donors next meeting in Jakarta from Feb. 1 to Feb. 2, during
which Indonesia's government is expected to come up with a clear
and better program of forest management. (cst)