W. Java govt takes control of forests from Inhutani

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Citing alarming deforestation and continued loss of human life, the West Java provincial administration has taken full control of the region's forests from state-owned company PT Inhutani.

The provincial legislative council endorsed a bylaw during its plenary session on Thursday, giving the provincial administration full authority to supervise the province's forests.

The spokesman for the legislature's special committee that deliberated the draft bylaw, Irfan Anshori, said the decision was made to enforce government regulations on fiscal balance giving the provincial administration authority to plan and manage all aspects of the future of the forests.

"The special committee has met with the minister of forestry and the president of Inhutani in Jakarta recently to discuss the enforcement of the government regulations and they agreed with the provincial administration's step to take over forest management from Inhutani," he said after the plenary session.

Public administration affairs deputy governor Husein Jachjasaputra said the bylaw was not aimed at taking over the authority from Inhutani but at returning the forest management to the provincial administration and reforesting hundreds of thousands of barren areas in the province.

"We are targeting to convert 40 percent of the barren areas into conservation areas by 2010," he said.

The deputy governor said provincial authorities had agreed to tighten the supervision of forest exploitation in the coming years.

"There is no more tolerance to illegal logging, forest looting and land conversion that has caused a serious deterioration of the environment over the last few years.

"We want no more human casualties in floods and landslides triggered by deforestation and environmental deterioration," he said.

He said the bylaw's endorsement had been controversial among many of the province's people.

During the one-month deliberation of the draft bylaw, at least 10 nongovernmental organizations had lodged objections as the government had yet to issue regulations enforcing Law No. 41/1999 on forestry.

Husein said forest areas in the province had halved from 1.5 million hectares in the 1970s to 770,000 hectares in the 1990s. Some 70 percent of the remaining forest was damaged due to rapid population growth in the province.

"Hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest areas have been converted to housing compounds and farmlands over the last ten years. If this continues, the environment will be unable to support the population that has reached more than 16 million," he said.