Timber estates threaten forests
By Stepanus Djuweng
PONTIANAK, West Kalimantan (JP): President Soeharto said recently that the forest fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra have been caused by the land clearing on cash-crop estates, timber estates and transmigration sites.
This is the first time the Indonesian government recognized direct environmental pollution is caused by development projects. It is a shift from the government's customary blame on indigenous farmers.
Data from the West Kalimantan forestry office indicates that there are 1.6 million hectares of land, or about 16 percent of the whole province, set aside for timber estate development.
Some 1.2 million hectares of it is for pulp estates, 105,000 hectares for non-pulp estates and 65,000 hectares for transmigration sites. There is no clear definition for each category.
The biggest timber estate areas belong to Finantara Intiga, a joint venture of private company Gudang Garam, state-owned Inhutani III and Finnish company Enzo Finland. Finantara Intiga plans to open up 100,000 hectares in the Sintang and Sanggau districts with total investments of US$ 150 million.
The company also plans to invest $1 billion dollars to develop a papermill -- helping the government's plan for Indonesia to become the world's biggest pulp and paper producer.
According to a 1992 study by the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi), Indonesia is targeting to produce 14.6 million tons of pulp and 36 million tons of paper annually by the year 2000.
The study claims that the environmental implications are tremendous: Indonesia needs to develop 12.65 million hectares of timber estates or six percent of total Indonesian land area to meet this target.
The promotion of Western-style paper consumption, it says, has increased per capita paper consumption by 11.2 percent from 1981 to 1989.
Table below shows per capita paper consumption in 28 countries (Kerski, 1995).
Country kgs per capita
USA 313
Thailand 30
Australia 152
Serbia 10
Japan 225
Russia 30
Italy 132
Nicaragua 4
Hong Kong 220
Brazil 28
S. Korea 128
Nigeria 3
Finland 215
Bulgaria 20
Ireland 97
India 3
Taiwan 205
China 17
Malaysia 62
Vietnam 1
Germany 190
Egypt 11
Chile 39
Ghana 1
UK 170
Indonesia 10
Poland 31
Laos 1
The global paper consumption is dominated by the North and the fast growing Asian tigers, who comprise only 16 percent of the world's population while consuming about three-quarters of global production. Southern hemisphere countries and Eastern Europe, with about 84 percent of the world's population, consumed only about one-third of the global paper production.
The environmental impacts of the pulp and paper industry will be getting more crucial in the coming years. Indonesian timber tycoon Mohammad Bob Hasan has started the construction of Southeast Asia's largest pulp mill.
With an investment of Rp 2.5 billion (about US$ 2.5 million), it is expected to produce 600,000 tons of pulp annually beginning next year to meet the demand of the world market. The project enjoys a ten-year tax holiday privilege.
Development economists believe that such a project is a good answer to good market opportunities: a market created through exploiting the unlimited wants of man and turning the wants into needs through advertisement.
According to West Kalimantan forestry office, there are 22 timber estates companies. Fourteen of them link their projects to the government transmigration program, six to pulp and two others are categorized as non-timber estates.
However, up to June 1995, only about 50,000 hectares out of a total 1.6 million hectares had been worked on.
The government cited several reasons for the below-target realization. First, companies lacked necessary funds. Second, the companies failed to pay proper land compensations. Third, there was an overlapping of land use, and fourth, the land in question was claimed by local Dayak people as their ancestral land.
The massive forest resource-based project not only causes environmental degradation, but also cuts the economic throat of the local indigenous peoples.
These so-called "development projects" occupying the Dayak farm lands have cut down the population's traditional plantations of rubber, coffee and fruit trees. Dr. Mubyarto, assistant chairman of the National Development Planning Board, has warned that large scale development projects in Kalimantan will eliminate many of the economic resources of the Dayak peoples.
On the other hand, the ecological ways of managing and extracting natural resources by the local Dayaks have not been favored by the government. Officials argue that such indigenous practices are not only economically unproductive, but are also detrimental to the environment.
This prejudice stems from a growth priority development paradigm. Apart from degrading the environment by the introduction of monoculture plantation, the use of fertilizer and other chemicals, these huge projects have also deprived the people of their ancestral land rights.
Although the primary goal of timber estate development is to provide materials for the pulp industry, the process of land clearing favor the plywood industry's interests.
The logs cut in the process of land clearing from primary forests are advantageous for the wood processing industry. In this light, the timber estate project is used as a means to bypass the regulation on selective cutting and planting.
This goes against the government policy that timber estates should be developed on critical land areas. Critical land is defined as a piece of land that cannot produce 20 cubic meters of log per hectare annually. In West Kalimantan, it is impossible to find 1.5 million hectares of critical land.
Other incentives for timber estate projects is the free- interest loans from the government originating from the reforestation funds (funds collected from forest concessionaires for replanting purposes).
Ironically, the fund is used to support deforestation through timber estate projects.
The writer is director of Institute of Dayakology Research and Development (IDRD) Pontianak, West Kalimantan.