Down to Earth No. 49, May 2001

Timber plantations: backing a loser

Rather than rethink the whole approach to forest management, the government appears to be determined to continue with attempts to "reforest" degraded areas by continuing with the much-criticised programme of industrial timber estate (HTI) development launched during the Suharto era. The HTI programme, originally aimed at providing timber for the wood-processing and pulp industries, has led to protracted conflicts over land with local communities and increased deforestation - since the plantations were typically established on forested lands. Companies typically used government subsidies for HTI projects to gain easy access to this land, then collect the profits from clear-felling the site, but failed to follow up with replanting. As a result, the success rate for HTI projects has been very low.

According to forestry department figures, only 22% of the 7.4 million hectares of land allocated to HTI projects have become productive. In 1999/2000 the ten companies with productive HTI plantations (in six provinces) provided only 4.84 million cubic metres of timber largely from permits to clear fell 'conversion' forests. Most of this timber was used by the pulp industry. Natural forests supplied 10.37 million cubic metres in the same period.* (Bisnis 20/Mar/01)

Despite these poor results, late last year, the forestry ministry announced a scheme to plant a million hectares of teak plantations as part of a 10 million ha 30-year target. The ministry's Director General of Forest Production and Utilisation, Soegeng Widodo, said the government would allocate Rp 5 trillion from the total Reforestation Fund of Rp 7.5 trillion for the projects, which would be developed by the government together with HPH concession holders, state-owned companies and co-operatives. A further Rp 1.5 trillion would be used to develop plantations of high value fast-growing timber species. The remaining Rp 1 trillion would be used to develop social forestry, customary forests (hutan adat), village forests, peoples forests and watershed forest rehabilitation, he said.

The Reforestation Fund, which is levied from loggers and was originally designed to fund forest rehabilitating logged-over concessions, was used by Suharto cronies and family members for their own projects - some of them having no relation to forests. At the insistence of the IMF, the Fund has been taken out of forestry department hands and put under the finance ministry control. Under regional autonomy legislation 40% of the Fund is now due to be returned to regional governments (see DTE 46), but some regions are insisting on a bigger share.

* Figures recently quoted by the Indonesian NGO Forests Watch are slightly different. These put timber estate development at 1.85 million ha or 23.5% of 7.86 million ha allocated to 175 companies, as of Jan 2001. Demand for pulpwood reached 25 million cubic metres, but timber estate capacity was only 3million cubic metres.
(Source: Indonesian Observer 5/Apr/01)


Fires

Predictions that the El Niņo climatic effect could return later this year are triggering fears that forest fires may engulf Indonesia's forests and spread a pall of smoke-haze over the whole region again. The worst fires in recent years were in 1997/98 - the last time that El Niņo occurred.
(see DTE 35-37).

According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) an estimated US$9.3 billion were lost because of the fires, and 10 million hectares of Indonesian forests were destroyed. More than 20 million people in the region were also exposed to the severe air pollution, with potential long-term health problems.

Environmental officials from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and UNEP met in Kuala Lumpur in March to discuss a proposed transboundary haze pollution agreement drafted by UNEP.

Indonesia's newly-appointed forestry minister, Marzuki Usman has promised action on the smoke threat to the country's neighbours. (Deutsche Presse-Agentur 22/Mar/01; AP 30/Mar/01)


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