FIRES 97

SUHARTO FIDDLES WHILE INDONESIA'S FORESTS BURN

DOWN TO EARTH PRESS RELEASE, Sept 1997

Indonesia's forests are going up in smoke. President Suharto has called the fires "a natural disaster", but an economic policy based on the over-exploitation of the archipelago's natural resources and the corruption entrenched in Indonesia's forestry industry have fuelled the blaze.

The region is suffering its worst drought in 50 years, due to the influence of a climatic phenomenon called El Nino. But this is not the first time Indonesia's forests have suffered from serious fires. In 1982-3 3.5 million ha of East Kalimantan went up in smoke in "The Great Fire of Borneo". Every year for the last 15 years the dry season has brought forest fires causing what the Malaysian government euphemistically called 'a haze' over Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
Indonesia has the world's third largest area of tropical rainforest. In the 1960s over 80% of the land was covered with forest; today forest cover is estimated at only 55%. The remaining 100 million ha of forests are being destroyed at a rate of 1 million ha per year. This year the figure will probably be higher. By August, officials stated fires were affecting 100,000ha of forest in Sumatra and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) . Now statellite pictures show 500-600ha of forest burning or destroyed and, with forecasts predicting no rain before November, the situation is getting worse. In West Papua/Irian Jaya, where drought has brought food shortages to the highlands, smoke from burning forests there have prevented planes taking off with relief supplies.
Since the 1970s Indonesia has been mining its forest wealth. Forestry is the Indonesian economy's second biggest earner after oil and gas. Commercial logging concessions have been granted for 64 million ha of forest. By the late 1980s Indonesia was the world's largest plywood producer. Government ministers boasted how the contry would also become the greatest supplier of paper pulp and palm oil as tropical rainforest was converted to plantations.
The current disaster has at last forced Indonesian cabinet ministers to acknowledge the destructive role of timber estates, plantation companies and the government's own transmigration scheme. Environment Minister Sarwono states that 90% of the burning is due to this. In the past, local farmers and shifting cultivators have been held to blame. Private and state-owned forestry companies strip out the most valuable timber, then burn the remaining forest as the quickest, cheapest way of clearing the land, before re-planting with a limited number of fast-growing introduced species.
With a personal wealth estimated at US$ 16 billion, President Suharto is the world's third richest ruler. He and his family are closely connected with the forestry industry. Timber tycoon Mohammad "Bob" Hasan is a close friend and business adviser of the President. Hasan controls some 3.5million ha of forests in Kalimantan, Sumatra, West Papua/Irian Jaya and Moluccas through two of the country's largest conglomerates - the Kalimanis Group and Astra groups. He controls the Indonesian timber trade in his position as head of the loggers and wood-processing trade associations. He also owns 10% of the shares in the Nusamba company involved in the Busang gold mine scandal; President Suharto and his eldest son, Sigit, control the remaining 90%.
Foreign investors, including those in the UK, are indirectly involved in pulping the rainforest in Indonesia. Investment and insurance companies buy into major forestry conglomerates such as Barito Pacific and APRIL which are listed on international stock exchanges. The Bank of Scotland is one of a syndicate of 25 foreign banks and export credit agencies which are supporting the development of the massive new PT TEL paper pulp mill in South Sumatra. Suharto's daughter, Tutut, is another major investor.The forest concession intended to supply the mill is one of those which is currently burning.
The fires will bring destitution to some of Indonesia's poorest people. Some 2 million of Indonesia's 200 million population live in or around forests and many more depend on them for their livelihoods. Many forest people have been forced to give up their traditional rights to timber and plantation companies. In return they become labourers on the estates. The government transmigration scheme has brought tens of thousands of landless peasants and their families to the timber estates and plantations as a source of cheap labour for the government's export drive and the commodity magnates.
The Indonesian government has been slow to tackle the fires and the underlying causes. The Environment Minister has no power over the forestry companies and, the Minister of Forestry has proved unwilling to confront companies owned by the President's family, friends or the military. Since 1994 controlled burning on plantations and timber estates in the dry season has been banned but, despite annual violations, no companies have ever been prosecuted. Although Indonesia claims to operate a selective logging and replanting scheme in its timber concessions, over-cutting and illegal logging is rife.
The demands of Indonesian environmental organisations for the government to use the Reforestation Fund to control the fires and the underlying causes have been ignored. Far from being used to restore natural forests, US$120 million of this billion dollar fund (derived from logging company fees) has been used shore up the rupiah in the reent currency crisis. It is is also used to further environmental destruction. President Suharto has personally sanctioned the use of the Reforesatation Fund for a 'megaproject' to turn more than one million hectares of swamp forest in central Kalimantan into ricefields, in the face of evidence from Indonesian and international scientists that this will be an ecological and financial disaster. Even a court case by environmentalists did not stop him lending Bob Hasan over US$100 million from the same fund to finance his newest Kiani Kertas paper pulp in East Kalimantan.
Half Indonesia's tropical rainforests have already been sacrificed in a drive to rival the other tiger economies of the Pacific Rim. Now as the Indonesian currency has crashed and the new plantations go up in smoke, environmentalists fear that the remaining forests - and the millions of people who have traditionally managed these lands sustainably for generations - will come under even greater pressure in future.

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