Time to get realistic about forest crisis

Time to get realistic about forest crisis

Longgena Ginting, Executive Director, The Indonesian Forum
for Environment (Walhi), Jakarta

Indonesia's forests are in dire straits. This fact is not
debatable anymore, and is in such a state that there is no longer
any news value in the tragic state of affairs. Only the
consequences of Indonesia's forest crisis is noteworthy in the
midst of the people suffering price increases, while corrupt
politicians and their cronies responsible for the misery walk
free.

Immediate examples that come to mind include: The 26 people
confirmed killed and 17 missing in East Java in the December
landslides resulting from rampant deforestation by state company
Perhutani; the floods, fires and other natural disasters that
have caused serious ecological damages and human suffering; and
social unrest and upheavals wherein depriving indigenous
communities of natural resources have led to fatal conflicts.

The current rate of forest loss is about 2.5 million hectares
a year, and within a couple of years, give or take a few, all
lowland rainforests in Indonesia will be destroyed unless radical
changes are implemented in the forestry sector.

The vandalization of Indonesia's forests causes rapid
degradation of our natural heritage, and an unprecedented loss of
biodiversity. Furthermore, it destroys the free environment and
other subsistence needs provided by nature to local communities,
as well as the entire population, of our country. This, in turn,
destroys the social fabric of our nation. The long-term economic
and social costs of letting the current madness continue
unchecked, which only serves the corrupt few besides, will
continue to accumulate ever faster unless thorough changes are
made now.

The blatantly criminal activities in the forestry sector,
whether categorized as "legal" or "illegal" at the Ministry of
Forestry, violates Indonesians' social and cultural rights
throughout the country, and compromises our future. Conflicts
between logging companies operating on adat (traditional) lands
and the affected local communities often escalate and lead to
direct violations of civil rights, including torture and murder.

The companies often hire Police or Indonesian Military (TNI)
units to defend their destructive interests and to intimidate
local communities. The recruited Police and TNI units, in
addition to remuneration by the logging companies for their
"security" services, often have their own vested interests in the
timber business, often involving mutually beneficial financial
schemes with leading political parties or figures. For this, they
sign up to defend the destruction of forests and human rights
violations against local communities.

Walhi, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, has been
campaigning for a national moratorium on industrial logging to
open space for the implementation of much-needed reforms. We have
also worked to support such moratoriums at provincial levels over
the last two years. Logging moratoriums have now been agreed to
by the governors of Aceh and West Java, but the state logging
company Perhutani still refuses to follow suit in West Java.

In January 2003, Minister of Resettlement and Regional
Infrastructure Soenarno and State Minister of the Environment
Nabiel Makarim, recognizing the role logging has played in
causing severe landslides, floods and droughts regularly
throughout Java, called for a logging moratorium on the whole of
Java.

It is easy to argue in favor of the same measure for other
areas of Indonesia. Severe flooding, landslides and fires have
struck parts of all major islands in our country. In many cases,
such "natural" disasters are directly linked to forest
degradation and loss. With more than 70 percent of industrial
wood cut each year in Indonesia via illegal operations, it is
high time to take major steps to address the forest crisis, and
to tackle its causes.

In her address at the International Tropical Timber
Organization (ITTO) meeting in Denpasar in May 2002, President
Megawati Soekarnoputri herself considered a logging moratorium as
a necessary step in order to stop forest destruction and loss.

However, strong forces in the Ministry of Forestry are
resistant to such ideas, and this ministry has even attempted to
stop the implementation of logging moratoriums at the provincial
and local levels.

The Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) should recall the
demands of CGI 9, and decisively support efforts to implement
industrial logging moratoriums at various levels of government,
so as to enable solid reforms and the long overdue restructuring
of Indonesia's forestry sector.

The annual allowable wood volume for 2002, as officially set
by the Ministry of Forestry for all of Indonesia, was 12 million
cubic meters, whereas the demand for natural wood from pulp
mills, plywood mills and sawmills in Indonesia was about 63
million cubic meters. The majority of the shortcomings in
capacity comes from illegal logging operations. Without
addressing the enormous overcapacity in the wood processing
sector, it will impossible to stop the almost universal crime of
illegal logging in Indonesia.

The CGI should provide new and additional grants to assist
Indonesia in rapidly reducing overcapacity. In particular, funds
should be provided for the retrenchment and retraining of forest
industry workers who will lose their current jobs. These grants
should have strict conditions to ensure that they will actually
benefit those workers affected by the initiatives to tackle the
overcapacity problem.

Indonesia's forests are home to tens of millions of indigenous
peoples. However, the forests which indigenous communities
traditionally owned and managed have been expropriated by the
Ministry of Forestry.

In addition to increasing poverty and threatening the very
survival of the society and cultures of traditional communities,
these actions violate the international law on human rights and
the rights of indigenous peoples, and also violate the spirit of
the 1945 Constitution.

The CGI must request the Indonesian government to respect the
rights of indigenous peoples and to stop all industrial logging
and conversion operations taking place on their traditional lands
without their free and informed consent.

All attempts to address the crisis concerning Indonesia's
forests are being stymied by corruption, which is widespread
throughout the tiers of government, military, police, legislature
and judiciary.

Sadly, a lot of time and resources has already been lost
recently on debates about "technical" solutions to curb illegal
logging by timber tracking, and to support "sustainable" logging
by timber certification, to help address Indonesia's forest
crisis.

It is time to be realistic: It is time for a nationwide
moratorium on industrial logging, followed by implementation of
the reforms agreed to at the 9th CGI meeting.

No another CGI meeting can be allowed to pass by without
making solid commitments to immediate and fundamental reforms of
Indonesia's forestry sector. Unless, of course, the CGI members
consider it more "realistic" to be indifferent to, and thus
indirectly encourage, government corruption, corporate crime,
ecological destruction and gross human rights abuses.

It is hoped that "good governance", "human rights", and
"poverty alleviation" are not just empty words.