Need to link commitments on forestry

By Hariadi Kartodihardjo

BOGOR (JP): Since the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank included forest policy reform in the Letter of Intent in 1998, and since the Consultative Group for Indonesia (CGI) used the issue as a condition for debt relief, international institutions have continued efforts to improve forestry performance.

The international conference on "Forestry Law Enforcement and Governance" from Sept. 11-13 in Bali will be closed by a ministerial statement expressing the political commitment of nine Asian countries for action at the country and regional level.

The Inter-Departmental Committee on Forestry (IDCF) was set up following CGI pressure last year in Jakarta. Although the committee has already arrived at a comprehensive framework and action plans to control forest degradation, the agenda has yet to be implemented.

Some activities have been carried out by the Ministry of Forestry; however high priority action plans such as those related to illegal logging, restructuring of the timber industry, and reform of forest management systems in line with decentralization -- which needs inter-departmental coordination -- have not resulted in significant progress.

Indonesia's complex management of forest degradation is caused by structural problems: the gap in allocation of the rights to utilize forest resources, conflicting claims, and conflicts of interest among bureaucrats, including law enforcers. All these make people pay less attention to sustaining the forest.

Private parties are able to afford the extra, high costs entailed because they have the opportunity to gain from illegal logging or overcutting as compensation, and upholding the law becomes difficult.

Small success stories on forest degradation control are due to the presence of people capable of reforming the role of bureaucracy and at the same time win over the support of the local community. Improvements are needed for an open and credible bureaucracy, which enables the making of decisions together with the community.

The key is in the commitment of the local government leaders, especially the heads of regencies.

One major problem in our transition towards decentralization lies in the weak communications between central government and local administrations, especially in the implementation of forestry policy. Army members and bureaucrats have been known to be involved in illegal logging activities, which at times benefit local communities seeking to regain some of their resources.

With diverse perceptions and priorities among stakeholders, an approach stressing instructions from the center -- such as the issuance of a presidential decree or instruction -- would not receive support or produce a positive result. The weak implementation of the presidential instruction and Ministry of Forestry decree on the moratorium of ramin (Gonystillus bancanus) cutting and trading is a clear example.

Transaction costs for legal logging businesses are very high compared with the costs and risks of illegal ones. A research in 1998 showed that to secure their various necessary permits for many activities, private companies had to spend around 26 to 48 percent of their variable costs.

A preliminary result from this year's study by the Ministry of Industry and Trade together with Sucofindo shows that transaction costs amount to Rp 203,000 per cubic meter. The costs included "supporting costs" for guidance and control of forest concessions by the government which reached Rp 900 million per year for a forest concession with an annual log production of 45,000 cubic meters.

A crucial issue is how the international agenda and national commitment can be linked to the commitment of local government, and how the bureaucracy can be reformed.

The failure of last year's multi-sector agenda under the Interepartmental Committee on Forestry and other previous international programs were due to the absence of intensive communication to link those international commitments with national, as well as local, concerns.

Governance and bureaucracy problems are the most important causes of forest degradation. International initiatives cannot be more than a trigger to further work in this area. Experience in the last two years has shown that the forest reform agendas that could be carried out were only those agreed through intensive communication among the central and local government as well as other stakeholders, followed by bureaucracy reform and strengthening.

Any one agenda could be better than any other, but it would be futile without sufficient commitment and institutional capability.

Dr. Hariadi Kartodihardjo is deputy for environmental degradation control at the Environment Impact Management Agency/Bapedal and a lecturer at the Faculty of Forestry, Bogor Agricultural Institute.