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.