Timber estates threaten forests
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.