Ministry deplores lack of support in saving forests

Ministry deplores lack of support in saving forests

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Ministry of Forestry has complained that the Ministry of
Home Affairs has not given it enough support in its efforts to
curb deforestation in the country.

One of the Ministry of Forestry's main concerns now is the
fact that many regional governments, disregarding the critical
condition of Indonesian forests, have issued a great number of
logging licenses to private firms which would certainly worsen
the situation.

The ministry has long planned to file a petition with the
Supreme Court for judicial review of the bylaws which provide the
legal basis for the issuance of the logging licenses.

However, the home ministry has not approved the move.

Boen Poernama, the head of the Forestry Planning Agency at the
Ministry of Forestry, said under the existing bureaucratic
procedures, the ministry should gain approval from the home
ministry before taking any action on local administrations
violating the forestry law.

"We have requested their approval (the Ministry of Home
Affairs) of our plan several times to petition for the judicial
review, but there has been no response.

"If there was no such procedure, we could have requested the
Supreme Court to review dozens of controversial forestry bylaws
issued by 'defiant' local administrations," said Boen on the
sidelines of a press conference on Wednesday.

Based on the existing law, the home ministry is the only
agency authorized to deal with local administrations.

If there are any problems resulting from actions of the local
administration, arising from the autonomy law, other ministries
have to coordinate with the home ministry. It will then take the
necessary actions to solve the problems.

Given the current situation, Boen said, the Ministry of
Forestry has decided to ask the House of Representatives to help
settle the matter.

The problem of logging licenses has become a subject of
dispute between the Ministry of Forestry and local governments
today as the latter have refused to comply with the former's
instruction, claiming rights over forests in their respective
areas.

The Ministry of Forestry banned the issuance of logging
licenses in 1999 in order to rehabilitate damaged natural
forests, as deforestation has affected around 50 million hectares
of the country's 120.3 million hectares of forest.

Forest-concession holders are seen as the main culprits in the
deforestation.

However, emboldened by greater powers granted by the autonomy
law, several local administrations have rejected the ministry's
order and continued to issue logging licenses.

For instance, Papua province issued logging licenses to 44
private firms last year over an area totaling 11.8 million
hectares. They are expected to produce around 3 million cubic
meters of timber this year, twice the annual logging quota of 1.5
million cubic meters set by the ministry for the province.

Another defiant regency is Sintang in West Kalimantan which
has issued 409 licenses covering a total area of 41,000 hectares.
The regency has targeted its timber output to reach 1.26 million
cubic meters per year.

In Sanggau, another regency in West Kalimantan, the local
administration has targeted an output of 400,000 cubic meters of
timber per year. Worse still, Sanggau has also issued a bylaw
allowing locals to export illegally cut timber taken from other
provinces.

The ministry has limited the national log output for this year
to only 6.8 million cubic meters, from 12 million last year, in
order to curb deforestation.