Limited supply partly blamed for illegal logging
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The high demand for timber on the growing national and international markets and limited supply keeps the illegal timber trade thriving and results in ever increasing pressure on Indonesia's forests, environmental activists say.
Indonesia has the world's highest rate of deforestation, with about three million hectares, or an area of forest the size of Switzerland, being lost every year.
Christian Purba, director of the Bogor branch of Forest Watch Indonesia, said a shortage of supply for the domestic timber industry meant that businesses were willing to buy logs wherever they could get them, including from illegal suppliers.
"Only 20 percent of total demand in Indonesia is capable of being provided from legal sources. The rest of it is illegal," he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Togu Manurung of the Indonesian Forestry Academics Union (Persaki) had earlier said that the demand from local industry averaged between 63 million and 80 million cubic meters of logs through last year, while only 12 million cubic meters could be provided through legitimate felling.
"The problem is that the demand is higher than the supply. This results in timber businesses buying from illegal sources ... ," Christian said.
With one of the largest tropical rain forest covers in the world, Indonesia is a major player in supplying the annual global timber demand of more than 1 billion cubic meters.
"A colleague of mine once said that only 17 million cubic meters of timber products are (legally) available for export," said Christian.
Telapak and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) last week reported that around 2.3 million cubic meters of Indonesian timber were smuggled onto the Chinese market last year, which made Indonesia the world's second biggest exporter of illegal timber, after Russia.
Telapak activist M. Yayat Afianto said that international demand was high for various types of wood found in Indonesia.
"Each of the major islands in Indonesia produce certain species of wood that are in high demand in different timber industries. These include ebony, ramin (Gonystylus) and merbau (Intsia). Logs from each of these species are worth thousands of U.S. dollars," Yayat explained.
Christian said the retail price of ramin logs in Europe or North America could reach US$1,000 per cubic meter, while merbau was worth up to US$2,288 per cubic meter.
The high prices offered on the international market have led to rampant smuggling of these rare species.
"Between 50 and 60 cubic meters of timber are smuggled from Sumatra on average each day every year. About 250 cubic meters come from Kalimantan and between 60 and 70 cubic meters from Sulawesi. Right now, about 10,000 cubic meters are being smuggled out of Papua each day," Yayat said, revealing the results of Telapak's investigation.
Christian proposed two solutions for tackling industry-related problems: taking action against guilty companies and importing legal timber from countries not involved in the timber smuggling racket.
"The government should close down those companies that refuse to purchase legal timber because they say it is more expensive," he said.
"If our industry cannot meet domestic demand, we should consider importing wood from other countries, but only from those countries not involved in the illegal syndicates. The purpose of this would be to bring supply and demand into equilibrium," Christian explained. (006)