Weak law enforcement causes rampant illegal logging

P.C. Naommy, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A senior official at the Ministry of Forestry said that rampant smuggling of the country's timber, in particular trees classified as endangered was partly due to poor law enforcement and weak coordination among related authorities.

"It's impossible to rely only on the Ministry of Forestry to eradicate illegal logging in the country".

"We need integrated cooperation between related departments, because the current joint cooperation with the Navy and the Police will come be ineffective without good coordination with other departments," said Wijono.

Wijono explained that the current Wanalaga and Wanabahari programs were not enough without the support of other ministries, such as the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.

Wanalaga is a joint cooperation between the Ministry of Forestry and the Police to curb illegal logging and log smuggling. Wanabahari is a joint cooperation with the Indonesian Navy to prevent smuggling of forestry products.

According to Wijono, the basic problem is the lack of law enforcement in the country. "We need to ensure that the laws are really being upheld," he said.

Non-governmental organization Telapak and the London-based Environment Investigation Agency (IEA) said in their joint investigative report that millions of dollars of endangered ramin wood had been smuggled from Sumatra to Johor Baru area in Malaysia, to be made into consumer goods like picture frames and cribs for export to Hong Kong and Shanghai before final distribution to Europe and the U.S.

Ramin is a pale-colored tropical hardwood which is listed in the United Nations Convention on International Trade as an Endangered Species (CITES).

The investigative report showed that about 4,500 cubic meters of ramin was smuggled every month from Sumatra to Malaysia.

According to Wijono, in the CITES, ramin is listed in appendix 3, which means that it is in the third priority class of endangered species.

"We are now struggling to put it (ramin) in appendix 1 for most endangered species," said Wijono, adding that this would provide greater international leverage for protecting ramin trees.

According to one estimate, around 2 million hectares of forest is destroyed each year due to the illegal logging. If this illegal logging continues unchecked, the country's virgin rain forest could be destroyed by 2005.

A number of NGOs and environmentalists have previously accused corrupt officials of playing a role in the rising number of illegal activities in the country.

There has been report alleging that the military -- through its private businesses - has logged illegally and operated saw mills to pay the daily expenses of troops. The military has long denied being involved in illegal logging.

The report said that police and the courts have failed to prosecute illegal loggers, even when other Indonesian agencies, including the Ministry of Forestry and navy, intervened.

Others also blamed on the weak legal system in the country. According to the Ministry of Forestry, only 30 cases were brought to trial last year out of the 150 cases filed.