Pulp wood estates face hurdles from land clearing
Pulp wood estates face hurdles from land clearing
JAKARTA (JP): Land-clearing problems and lengthy negotiations
with indigenous people are the main reasons for the slow
development of pulp wood estates, a forestry executive said
yesterday.
Hendro Prastowo, the executive chairman of the Association of
Indonesian Forest Concessionaires (APHI), explained that land
clearing, which is often related to traditional land rights, can
take months and sometimes years for a forest concessionaire to
settle.
"So even if a company has already gained an 'allotment
approval' -- government approval to manage a certain area -- the
company may still need more time to actually start planting,"
Hendro said.
After gaining an allotment approval, he said, the firm must
then seek approval from its "neighbors", including other
concessionaires and indigenous villagers, with whom it shares
borders and, possibly, overlaps.
Only then can the government issue a decree allowing the
company to start operations.
Nonetheless, Hendro admitted that several concessionaires
failed to reach their plantation targets not because of land-
clearing problems but simply because of negligence.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Forestry,
companies given concessions to develop pulp wood estates to
support their pulp and paper plants have so far planted 519,781
hectares or only 13 percent of the 4.05 million hectares of
timber estates targeted by the government.
The statistics issued by APHI, however, show that as of last
December, forest concessionaires had planted only 597,418
hectares of pulp wood estates or almost 15 percent of the target
of 4.05 million hectares.
Hendro said yesterday that the government had set the planting
target for 10 years in 1989, when it first started issuing
concessions the task of helping to supply materials to pulp
producers.
Most of the wood estates already developed were established by
the first 13 companies to get concessions. They were allotted
2.63 million hectares of concession areas by the government.
Now, nine additional firms have submitted proposals for a
similar purpose and the government has allocated an additional
1.42 million hectares for them. So far, however, they have
planted only 26,273 hectares.
As of last year, Indonesia's pulp industry, according to APHI
statistics, had a total production capacity of 2.54 million tons
a year.
Last year Indonesia produced 2.02 million tons of pulp, of
which 900,000 tons were exported. The country also imported
751,400 tons of pulp last year to meet its annual demand of about
1.89 million tons.(pwn)