'Logging mafia to profit from new bylaw'

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan, North Sumatra

The North Sumatra legislative council approved on Thursday a controversial bylaw on spatial planning for the province, which critics say fails to protect the interests of people and allows illegal loggers to denude protected forests.

Hundreds of activists from the Coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations (Ornop) held a demonstration at the council to protest the approval of the bylaw, which will be effective until 2018 and maps out rural regions in the province that can used for physical development, economic activity and those that will remain as protected zones.

The protesters demanded that the bylaw implementation be postponed so revisions could be made that would be more acceptable to the majority of people and would protect forests from illegal loggers.

The bylaw was endorsed in voting during a plenary session presided over by council speaker Ahmad Azhari. However, the National Mandate Party and the Coalition faction in the council rejected it.

Herwin Nasution, executive director of North Sumatra's Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) -- part of the Ornop, said the bylaw did not benefit the people of the province, but only a few elites who would profit from the new arrangement at the expense of protected natural forests among other things.

It also failed to include maximum efforts to preserve protected forests in North Sumatra to prevent floods, landslides and drought in the future, he explained.

Citing an example, Herwin said the Dairi regency administration had demanded that the protected forest in Tanah Pinem subdistrict be maintained, but the new bylaw will allow it to be exploited.

The bylaw also did not include a number of other protected forests in several districts, such as those in Sibayak, Deli Serdang regency; Sinabung and Lengketu in Karo regency; Sipirok, Batang Toru and Angkola South Tapanuli regency.

"The move not to include firmly those protected forests in the spatial planning bylaw is believed to be related with a mafia network in a bid to essentially legalize illegal logging there," Herwin said.

Sharing Herwin's idea, Director of the Indonesian International Conservation group Erwin A. Perbatakusuma said the bylaw manipulated the "status and function" of forest areas.

Based on Presidential Instruction No. 33/1998, the ecosystem zones of the Mount Leuser National Park are set at Karo, Deli Serdang, Langkat and Dairi, but this new bylaw says the park is only located in Langkat district, Erwin added.

Councillor Haryanto said his Coalition faction rejected the bylaw because it was drafted and approved without a comprehensive assessment.

He argued that the bylaw did not clearly explain how to deal with the so-called "Holding Zone", covering 100,000 hectares of protected forests in 20 locations across North Sumatra which have been seriously damaged by illegal loggers.

Similarly, PAN faction spokesman H.S.Panggabean said his party opposed the bylaw for a lack of its clarity in dealing with the Holding Zone.

It is further evidence that the provincial administration and the council was unwilling to enforce the law firmly against illegal loggers in the protected areas, added Herwin.