Illegal logging continues in Indonesia

The Bentayan Wildlife Reserve covers, on paper, 23,220 hectares. But it is an hour’s drive through the conservation area to the start of the natural forest. Locals have cultivated some of the intervening land, but the vast majority has been turned into a wasteland by illegal loggers.

An occasional tree in this corner of south Sumatra province has escaped the plunder. Otherwise all that is visible for kilometre after kilometre are stumps and rough grassland. Locals say the illegal logging is on an industrial scale, with dozens of truckloads of wood being extracted every day.Such scenes are typical across Indonesia, where deforestation is taking place at an estimated rate of five football pitches a minute – faster than anywhere else in the world. About 80 per cent, according to the United Nations, is being done illegally. Conservation International, which conducts satellite research, says that four per cent of Indonesia’s conservation land is being encroached upon every year.

One of the side-effects of this is that Indonesia, which from Monday will host a UN conference in Bali to plan for the post-Kyoto battle against climate change, has become the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. This is mainly because vast tracts of carbon-rich peatlands are being illegally cleared for oil palm, dubbed “green gold”.

The myriad signs of recent activity lend credence to the reports of illegal logging on an industrial scale. But officers at the nearest forestry department police post, about five kilometres outside the reserve, insist that no illegal logging is taking place. They are also adamant that no oil palm plantation companies are encroaching into the reserve, although locals say that tens of thousands of trees have been planted on land that forestry officials have told them is included.

Some recent attempts to clamp down on illegal logging do appear to be succeeding. Almost half the country’s plywood companies have had to close in the last two years as a result of a raw materials shortage, the industry’s association chief said this week. Indonesia is also the first country in the world to make forest crimes a money laundering offence.

As a result, far fewer shipments of illegal Indonesian logs are arriving in foreign ports, according to Julian Newman of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a London and Washington-based group.

“Enforcement is definitely having an impact because there’s less timber obviously available than before,” he said. “It’s hard to quantify but people who were dealing in Indonesian timber are now looking elsewhere.”

The crackdowns could be much better targeted, however, according to Frances Seymour, the head of the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research. “[They] tend to be focused on the little guy with the chainsaw and not the big guy with the bank account, so we need to be cautious about high profile crackdowns.”

Such poorly directed efforts point to the biggest problem hampering improvements in Indonesia’s long-term sustainable forest management. “We need to improve forest governance in the government, business and the community sectors,” says Wahjudi Wardojo, a deputy forestry minister.

“None of them are working well. The government has to be much better organised. The limits of authority are not yet clear, so responsibility, accountability and liability are hard to monitor and enforce. Some of our laws are also overlapping which causes confusion.”

The lack of clarity refers to disputes between different levels of government — national, provincial and district – and between departments. For example, cash-hungry district chiefs often grant concessions where they have no legal right to do so. And a dispute between the police and the forestry department in Riau province has brought most of the pulp industry to its knees in the last few months.

Part of the problem, according to Mr Newman, is that Indonesia has not categorically defined legal timber.

Conservationists are hoping that salvation lies in the concept of allowing so-called “avoided deforestation” to become eligible for carbon credits under the replacement the UN hopes to negotiate for the Kyoto climate change protocol.

The concept, called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), appears to have widespread global support, not least because deforestation accounts for almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, with about half from Indonesia alone.

Experts warn, however, that implementation will be difficult and the incentives will have to be considerable. “It’s definitely not a silver bullet [and palm oil] is a significant new threat to forests,” says Ms Seymour. “A very robust REDD regime will be necessary to counter the profits to be made from this lucrative industry.”

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