Tackling illegal logging in Indonesia
22nd May 2007
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Indonesia country profile |
Millennium Development Goal 7:
Environment
 Each
year, an area the size of Wales disappears from Indonesia’s forests. At this
rate, all lowland forest in the regions of Sumatra and Kalimantan could be gone
by 2010. If the destruction is to be stopped, it is crucial that the widespread
practice of illegal logging - which accounts for two-thirds of the annual
harvest - is stamped out. And to achieve this, steps need to be taken not only
in Indonesia, but in those countries around the world which import illegal
timber.
A major factor that has allowed illegal logging to thrive is confusion over the
law. This is why the governments of Indonesia and the UK got together in 2002 to
agree on a definition of what was and was not legal. The resulting Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) set out clearly the laws on logging, making it much easier
for the courts to prosecute offenders.
Clearing up the law
The new definition was field-tested by the international conservation
organization,
 The
Nature Conservancy, and later by a local timber certification body, Lembaga
Ecolabel Indonesia (LEI). According to Agus Setyarso, Director of the MoU
programme: “One of the great strengths of the legal standard is that once it was
passed on to LEI to develop, it had an Indonesian institutional home.” With
clarity over what exactly illegal logging is, it should also be much easier for
Indonesia to work with outside organisations, such as the European Union,
to reduce the international trade in illegal timber.
Another important achievement of the Memorandum was to fund the Konsortium of
Anti-Illegal Logging (KAIL), a group of non-governmental organisations working
together in the region of West Kalimantan. KAIL has convinced the authorities
that they should target the big players – known as the “cukong” – rather than the
villagers who are frequently forced by poverty to do the dirty work of getting
illegal timber out of the forests. The group’s investigations have helped to put
some prominent cukong behind bars.
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An international effort
 The
MoU has also had an impact on UK buyers of timber, with a series of MoU mill
audits resulting in contracts being cancelled with Indonesian suppliers who were
found to be using illegal stock. The
Timber Trade Action Plan, which is one of
six EU initiatives designed to keep illegal timber out of Europe, and is led by
the timber industry, was a direct outcome of the UK buyers’ actions.
Several other countries have also been stimulated by the MoU to sign agreements
with Indonesia, among them Japan, which has historically been a major destination for illegal
Indonesian wood products. In addition, the Memorandum helped the Ministry of
Forestry to draft a new law on combating illegal logging.
As a result of the work carried out through the MoU, Indonesia’s forests now
stand to be much better looked after by the law, and, internationally, there are
signs that there is greater awareness of
the need to combat the trade in illegal
timber (228
KB). But opportunities remain for further progress. A review of the work done
so far has suggested that illegal logging can be tackled, as well as by
effective law enforcement, by encouraging small forestry enterprises to play
more of a part in legitimate operations, giving them an increased sense of
responsibility towards the protection of the forests.
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Key Facts
- Indonesia loses $1.4 billion a year as a result of the trade in
illegal logging. Worldwide, the figure stands at $15 billion.
- The Memorandum of Understanding was a £1.5 million sub-programme of
the
Multistakeholder
Forestry Programme (MFP), for which DFID provided £25 million
funding between 2000 and 2006.
- MFP, through a single grant, funded a partnership between the
Environmental
Investigation Agency (EIA) and the Indonesian environmental group Telapak.
This trained non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in how to
investigate illegal logging. The evidence gathered informed the Bali
Declaration on illegal logging, which gave rise to a series of bilateral
anti-logging initiatives, including the Indonesia-UK MoU.
- MFP grants also went towards training local communities in how to
monitor and report illegal logging, and funding was provided towards the
establishment of a database of all forest-use licenses in Indonesia, to
be implemented by an independent NGO,
Forest
Watch Indonesia.
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