One million hectares of forest to be alloted to cooperatives

JAKARTA (JP): The government will allocate at least one million hectares of the country's forests to cooperatives in order to give more people an opportunity to manage the country's forest resources, Minister of Forestry and Plantations Muslimin Nasution said.

Muslimin said on Friday cooperatives would be given logging contracts to manage the forest areas.

"The one million hectares of forest allocated to cooperatives are part of 11 million hectares of forest which have been and will be taken over by the government from the old concessionaires," he said.

Muslimin said the government would take over 11 million hectares of forest concession areas by 2000, mostly from existing timber companies whose concession rights had expired or were suspended because of violations.

When timber companies' concession rights expire, the government can extend the contracts, but the concession areas will be limited to comply with a decree issued by the Ministry of Forestry and Plantations late last year.

Under the new decree, each concessionaire will be limited to a maximum of 100,000 hectares of forest in a province. Although concessionaires will be allowed to manage forests in other provinces, the total area under their management cannot exceed 400,000 hectares.

The government will take over the excess forest areas and auction them off or grant them to cooperatives.

"Of the 11 million hectares, one million hectares will be granted to local cooperatives, small-scale businesses and universities, while the remaining 10 million will be offered to the public through auction," he said.

Muslimin said the forest areas to be granted to each cooperative and small-scale business would be limited to 10,000 hectares, while those forest areas to be auctioned off would range between 50,000 and 100,000 hectares.

Logging contracts for areas less than 10,000 hectares will be given to cooperatives and small-scale firms by provincial governors as part of the government's effort to give local administrations greater autonomy in managing the country's forest assets, he said.

Local cooperatives which apply for logging contracts should have a recommendation from the governor, he said.

The ministry has set several criteria to determine which cooperatives are qualified to manage the forest in an environmentally sustainable manner, he said.

The government is trying to create equal opportunities for more people to manage forests assets. Aside from granting concessions to cooperatives, the government also has obliged timber companies to sell at relaxed terms at least 20 percent of their shares to cooperatives.

The government first began to award forest concessions to private companies in 1971 under the Forestry Law, which grants concession holders the sole right to cultivate and exploit the forest in their concession areas.

The move led to a concentration of the country's forests in the hands of a small number of business groups.

As part of the move to give more people the opportunity to manage the forests, Sulaeman L. Hamzah, head of the Irian Jaya chapter of the Indonesian Indigenous Businessmen Association, said the ministry allocated 10,000 hectares of forest in the province to cooperatives formed by local tribes.

Sulaeman was quoted by Antara news agency as saying that in the past, the government always ignored the rights of tribal communities because their region's forests were regarded by the state as belonging to whoever could raise the capital, labor and political patronage to exploit them. (gis)