'Logging mafia to profit from new bylaw'

'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.