[Kabar-indonesia] 5 JP Special Reports: Defending RI's Last Remaining Pristine Forests

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

5 JP Special Reports: 

- Defending RI's last remaining pristine forests 

- The complex journey of stolen timber 

- Logging operation suspects not convicted 

- RI struggles to save mangroves 

- Sumiarsih: Philosopher and keen gardener 
  on death row 

The Jakarta Post
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Defending RI's last remaining pristine forests 

With much of the forest in Sumatra, Java and Kalimantan denuded, Papua stands 
as a last frontier of Indonesia's remaining pristine forests.

The world's second-largest island still contains an extensive area of ancient 
forests, with trees aged hundreds of years home to many plant and animal 
species that have yet to be identified. Environmentalists activists refer to the 
jungle in Papua as "Paradise Forests". 

However, they are under serious threat from illegal logging, carried out by 
international syndicates eyeing Papua's endemic merbau tree, one of the world's 
most valuable sources of timber in terms of quality and price. 

The Jakarta Post's Tb. Arie Rukmantara has written three articles that 
examine the complex issues behind the illicit felling and rampant smuggling of 
merbau timber from Papua to China, the smuggling routes and what the law has to say 
in dealing with these issues. 

A fourth is published on today's page 9, containing an excerpt of an 
exclusive interview with Forestry Minister Malem S. Kaban about what he would like to 
do to address the problems. 

When European explorers first "discovered" the island of Papua and named it 
Nueva Guinea (New Guinea) in the early 16th century, they quickly realized that 
the world's second-largest island after Greenland boasted forests of abundant 
natural wealth. 

Historical archives of Papua's natural history compiled by the government in 
1962 say an early study by European botanists found trees reaching 100 meters 
high in some places with webs of branches up to 45 meters long. Trees covered 
almost all the island's land mass, home to thousands of unique plant and 
animal species. 

Much more recently, a group of Conservation International scientists 
discovered a host of new species deep in the forests surrounding the remote Papuan 
mountain of Foja, which they said was "the closest place to the Garden of Eden 
you are going to find on Earth." 

But these days, this Eden is under serious threat. About 40 million hectares 
of pristine forest on Papua have already been destroyed by illegal logging, 
which is feeding the growing demand for high-quality timber products across 
Europe and North America. 

In March, the Papua Police confiscated more than 1,000 cubic meters of 
illegally felled logs, along with heavy equipment and barges in Bintuni regency, 
some 500 kilometers west of Jayapura. 

During the ongoing national operation to combat logging, last year the 
National Police seized about 500,000 cubic meters of illegal timber from the 
province in two operations. 

However, environmental groups believe the timber the authorities have manage 
to confiscate is only a fraction of the more than seven million cubic meters 
of timber they say is smuggled out of Papua annually. That figure is equivalent 
to 70 percent 
of all the illegally cut timber leaving the country. 

Every year, the groups estimate the country loses around 2.8 million hectares 
of forest to logging and other forms of land clearing, an area the size of 
Belgium. 

In 2005 the Bogor-based Telapak and London-based Environmental Intelligence 
Agency detailed the rampant trade in merbau timber, a dark, luxurious, red wood 
that is primarily used for the manufacture of hardwood floors. This timber 
can fetch between US$200 and $275 per cubic meter on the global market and even 
more if 
it is processed. 

In their report, the groups say around 300,000 cubic meters of merbau logs 
are being smuggled out of Papua every month -- mostly to China. This rapid 
deforestation is causing an increase in dangerous landslides and floods and 
is endangering more than 11,000 endemic plant species and 500 animals. 

Greenpeace has called on the government to stop all illegal logging in Papua 
and to end all legal concessions in the province to save one of the world's 
last remaining large intact forests. The forests in Indonesia and Papua New 
Guinea, 
the group says, are among the remaining 20 percent of these forests left in 
the 
world and are being destroyed faster than any others on earth. 

Greenpeace also called on China to deny entry to all timber originating from 
Papua. 

"China's growing timber industry is partly responsible for the further 
destruction of Papua's forests," Greenpeace said. 

"At present, China is the world's largest tropical wood importer. With about 
half of the world's tropical wood already harvested, most of this timber now 
comes from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, of which from 76 to 90 percent is 
illegally plundered." 

Another report by a coalition of international organizations found the United 
States, Japan and the European Union were the leading importers of Chinese 
manufactured wood products. 

"Few consumers realize that the cheap prices they pay are directly linked to 
the exploitation of the poorest people on earth and the destruction of their 
forests," said Andy White, the lead author of the report. The study was based 
on five years of research by the Bogor-based Center for International Forestry 
Research, the Washington-based Forest Trends and the Center for Chinese 
Agricultural Policy. 

Telapak and the EIA's most recent investigation presented evidence that major 
wood flooring retailers are using illegal Merbau originating from Papua. 

Their recent report found the U.S.-based Armstrong, Denmark's Junckers, 
Germany's Tarkett, Sweden's Kahrs and Canada's Goodfellow firms could not determine 
where their merbau supplies came from and were unable to prove it was legally 
sourced. 

"Although suppliers and retailers of merbau flooring are not themselves 
breaking the law, they are profiting from an illegal trade and are misleading their 
customers into buying products made from stolen timber," Telapak coordinator 
Arbi Valentinus told The Jakarta Post at his office in Bogor, West Java. 

The report says these companies, which sell their brands worldwide through 
international home improvement chain stores like the Home Depot, Lowe's and 
Leroy Merlin, were sourcing timber cut by Malaysian companies. These firms were 
recently accused of illegal logging in protected areas of Papua. 

Meanwhile, one of the Malaysian companies' Indonesian suppliers recently 
admitted to buying about 3,000 cubic meters of merbau logs from Papua every six to 
eight weeks without legal documents. 

European Commission program manager for natural resources Vernon Copeland 
admitted no laws had been drafted to stop European companies or consumers from 
buying illegally sourced wood products. However, he believed Europeans were 
becoming more aware of the issue. 

"Findings by these NGOs have raised the level of awareness in Europe 
regarding illegal logging to the extent that consumers are now questioning companies 
about where the wood of the product they are selling comes from. Consumers are 
becoming quite choosy," he told the Post. 

To solve the problem, Vernon said the EU had taken an initiative, the Forest 
Law Enforcement and Governance Trade (FLEGT) action plan. 

"The action plan foresees a licensing scheme," he said, referring to the 
agreement signed in 2003 by the EU, Indonesia and other timber producing and 
manufacturing countries. 

"What we would hope to move toward, is a system whereby a certain range of 
timber products from Indonesia entering the EU will require a license. This 
license would attest to the timber's origin and say that it was harvested in 
accordance with the regulations and laws of Indonesia." 

However, Christian Poerba of Forest Watch Indonesia doubted the initiative 
would be put in place soon. He said the signatories were still finding it 
difficult to reach a common agreement. 

"The parties to FLEGT must first persuade countries that are widely accused 
of laundering Papuan timber to sign the deal," he said. 

"That will take years to settle -- which is too long." 

Yayat Afianto, a Telapak forest campaigner and researcher, suggested the 
Indonesian government list merbau on the Convention of International Trade in 
Endangered Species. 

"Once it is listed, only a small quota of the timber will be allowed to be 
traded. If a country violates the convention, the international world will 
punish them," he said. 

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The Jakarta Post
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

The complex journey of stolen timber 

The illegal logging and smuggling of merbau timber from Papua involves a 
complex web of international middlemen, timber barons and financial backers, who 
cooperate with senior Indonesian government officials, environmental activists 
say. 

"China and India are the main destinations for illegal Merbau logs. But 
before the logs get there, they have to travel to several other countries to be 
'laundered' -- to have their ports of origin changed," Telapak forest researcher 
and campaigner Yayat Afianto told The Jakarta Post. 

A recent Telapak/Environmental Investigation Agency report shows that the 
smuggling of Merbau logs involves international syndicates working in Papua, 
Jakarta and Surabaya and in the neighboring countries of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong 
Kong, and Vietnam. These networks often collaborate to ship the timber to 
China and India where it is processed and sold across North America and Europe. 

And not all of the wood is illegally felled -- although an estimated 70 to 90 
percent of it is. Corrupt officials in Papua have persuaded and sometimes 
forced Papuan loggers to sell the wood in legal forest concessions for around 
US$10 per cubic meter, when the logs can fetch more than 20 times that on 
international markets, the report says. And this legal logging then serves as a front 
for the much larger illegal industry. 

Papua's legal forestry concessions date from 1999, when the government issued 
a decree permitting the allocation of small-scale local concessions of 100 
hectare community plots as part of special autonomy for the region. According to 
Forest Watch Indonesia, about 300 community units now hold almost 240,000 
hectares of forest concessions in the province. 

Representatives of timber barons then went to the concession areas, promising 
to help villagers develop their resources, with developers sometimes building 
roads and churches for the residents in exchange for the valuable timber on 
their land. More often than not, the value of the wood taken from these areas 
far exceeded the value of the projects, the report says. 

Several Jakarta and Surabaya middlemen then found buyers for the merbau wood 
and guaranteed delivery of the timber to the agreed destinations, Telapak 
report said. 

These brokers, who have close ties with high ranking government and security 
officials here, work with several Malaysian companies, which are already 
logging in Papua, using their heavy equipment transported from neighboring Papua 
New Guinea and Sarawak, Malaysia. 

With the involvement of the Malaysians, only a fraction of the wood was 
sourced legally from the community programs. 

"The problem is that the authorities in Sarawak and on the Malaysian 
peninsular seem to have different policies on logging. While environmentalists have 
successfully persuaded the Malaysian government to help Indonesia combat illegal 
logging, the Sarawak administration seems to have no obligation to follow 
this commitment," Yayat said. 

Telapak coordinator Arbi Valentinus said logs were often taken to Papua New 
Guinea to have their papers faked, with officials there "certifying" them with 
them false documents and changing their places of origin. 

Often timber illegally cut in PNG is also given false documentation stating 
it is Indonesian, Arbi said. 

In one example, the documents said the ship was carrying a timber subspecies 
that could only grow in Indonesian Papua, he said. 

Illegally cut merbau wood was also being increasingly transported to Vietnam 
and given forged documents of origin there, Yayat said. 

Vietnam had become a popular destination for the illegal wood since 2002, 
when after international pressure the Malaysian government slapped an import ban 
on all logs from Indonesia, he said. Vietnam still allows timber imports from 
Indonesia. 

"In recent years, Papuan timber has been sent to Vietnam before it is shipped 
to China. We have evidence to believe that these new Vietnamese companies are 
owned by Malaysians," he said. 

The wood was also taken to Hong Kong and Singapore, Yayat added. 

The report says brokers in Hong Kong act as a vital bridge to the Chinese 
mainland, establishing connections with buyers there. Meanwhile, Singaporeans 
brokered deals with Indian buyers, chartering cargo vessels and barges to 
transport the contraband timber to destinations on the subcontinent. 

"Many of the financial transactions for the merbau logs flow through 
Singapore's banks, including the opening of letters of credit between buyers and 
suppliers," the group report said. 

As for the routes to India, Yayat believed the smuggling took place through 
the Philippines. 

"We think that they may also adding to their loads there, by picking up 
Philippines timber," he said. 

The Greenpeace's Philippine office, however, doubted illegal loggers took 
more wood from the country. 

"The Philippines has no more forests. I believe the smugglers just use our 
country as a transfer point," the group's campaign director, Von Hernandez, told 
the Post. 

After being processed in China, the timber products are then sold in North 
America and Europe. "Meanwhile, merbau that manufactured in India is sold to 
Japan," Arbi said. 

The Telapak report notes the wood products are sold through international 
home improvement chain stores, such as the Home Depot and Lowe's that have 
thousands of stores in the US and Europe. 

The report says more wood flooring was sold in 2004 than ever before, with 
Europe and the U.S. consuming an estimated 189.5 million square meters -- enough 
to floor all of Washington DC. -- (Tb. Arie Rukmantara) 

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The Jakarta Post
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Logging operation suspects not convicted 

No one caught in last year's Operation Hutan Lestari has been convicted of 
illegal logging because conflicting regulations are making it difficult for law 
enforcement agencies to fight the crime, the police say.

However, environmental groups have also blamed graft in law enforcement 
agencies, including the police, prosecutors and the country's notorious courts, for 
illegal loggers being let off the hook. 

In 2005, police launched the second Operation Hutan Lestari and uncovered 137 
cases of illegal logging in Papua. 

However, 52 of these cases never went to trial, while 13 others were later 
dropped because of a lack of evidence. 

Another 18 cases proceeded to trials but all of the defendants were 
acquitted. 

National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Bambang Kuncoko said the 1999 Forestry 
Law, which gives the forestry minister authority to issue logging permits, 
conflicted with regional autonomy laws, which gives regents the rights to issue 
permits for small community-based projects. 

Environmental groups say regional permits are being manipulated by 
unscrupulous officials, including regents and members of the military and police, who 
are working with local middle men and foreign logging companies to illegally 
extract the wood. 

"Due to this regulation, there have been various interpretations among 
authorities in determining whether a log is legal or not," Bambang said. 

In a 2005 police raid in Papua, three foreign nationals were detained for 
logging in the province. However, due to what police said was a lack of evidence, 
these men were set free. 

Police also said they had difficulties guarding and securing evidence. 

"The cost of detaining a ship is huge plus there are the security costs of 
guarding evidence in remote places," Bambang said. 

"These conditions means some evidence gets damaged or lost, is not able to be 
presented in trials," he said. 

The police have urged the Attorney General's Office to speed up the trial 
process to help the police. 

Former AGO spokesmen Mashyudi Ridwan said prosecutors had done their best to 
process the cases. 

Regarding the 18 cases in which defendants had been acquitted, Mashyudi said 
the verdicts were the judges' final decisions. 

"We have brought serious charges against them but the verdicts were the 
judges'," he said. 

He said that the office was appealing the 18 acquittals made in the local 
Papua district courts. 

Telapak researcher Rizman Azmi Aziz said prosecutors could charge illegal 
loggers with a series of crimes under the Criminal Code, conservation and 
antigraft laws. Illegal logging because of its scale was hard to conceal, and a 
single photograph could be damming evidence, he said. 

Taufik Alimi of the Indonesian Ecolabelling Institute, which promotes 
certification for Indonesian timber products, said the state should be prosecuting 
foreign logging companies under money laundering laws. 

"I believe this would create a deterrent effect, especially regarding foreign 
nationals, because money laundering involves Interpol," he said. -- (Ika 
Krismantari and Tb. 
Arie Rukmantara) 

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The Jakarta Post
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

RI struggles to save mangroves 

Indonesia's mangrove trees are fast disappearing, with 6.6 million hectares 
destroyed over the past seven years, an official at the Forestry Ministry said. 

"At present, only about 2 million hectares of mangrove forests are in good 
condition, compared to about 9 million back in 1999," said Darori, the director 
general for land rehabilitation and social forestry, Monday. 

About 1.8 million hectares of the damaged mangroves were found inside forest 
areas and 4.8 million outside, Darori said. 

He added that 4.5 million hectares were moderately harmed and 2.1 million 
severely harmed. 

Ministry data indicates that in 1999 the country's mangrove forests stood at 
9.36 million hectares. 

Aris Poniman, an official with the National Survey and Charting Coordination 
Agency, said data from the Food and Agricultural Organization showed the rate 
of mangrove destruction in Indonesia reached 60,000 hectares a year during the 
1990s. 

"During that period, degradation also occurred in mangrove forests in several 
other Southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, 
Brunei Darussalam and the Philippines," Aris said. 

Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban said the massive destruction of 
Indonesian mangrove forests was mostly caused by a lack of awareness about the 
importance of mangroves and the benefits they provide. 

The impact of the December 2004 tsunami on Aceh, for example, might have been 
reduced by the presence of forests, especially mangrove, along the coasts. 

Another cause for the large-scale degradation was the lack of funds and human 
resources to run a sustainable mangrove rehabilitation program, said Kaban in 
his opening speech at a two-day National Workshop on Mangrove Ecosystem 
Management in Jakarta. He said rehabilitation efforts were unable to keep up with 
the speed of destruction. 

To prevent further damage, the Forestry Ministry has formulated a national 
strategy on the management of mangrove ecosystems, which is now awaiting 
presidential approval. 

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The Jakarta Post
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Sumiarsih: Philosopher and keen gardener on death row 

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post, Malang

"My body will die, but if we are close to God in our hearts, we shall have 
eternal life in heaven after death."

The woman, most of whose hair is already gray, says she is 57 years old. She 
is on death row. 

However, she appears quite healthy for someone that age. She has been in 
prison for 18 years, three spent at Surabaya's Kalisosok penitentiary and 13 at 
Sukun Penitentiary for Women, Malang, East Java. 

Her face does not reflect any tension though, even though Sumiarsih was 
sentenced to death for murder in East Java some 17 years ago. 

"I leave everything to God. It's my conviction that everything has been 
preordained and that we, as humans, will simply follow it," she told The Jakarta 
Post at the Sukun medicinal plant garden. 

While awaiting implementation of the death sentence that Surabaya district 
court has handed down to Sumiarsih and her son, Sugeng, she looks even more 
determined to accept her fate. 

Chief of Sukun Security Unit Nunuk Hari Mardiati said that in her 13 years 
there, Sumiarsih has been very active in spiritual activities. She has never 
been absent from Christian church services. 

Sentenced to death for the murder of five people in Surabaya, on Aug 23, 
1988, Sumiarsih also frequently dispenses advice about the meaning of life, not 
only to fellow inmates and penitentiary warders but anyone who happens to fall 
into conversation with her. 

When the Post visited the garden located behind the penitentiary, Sumiarsih, 
assigned to take care of the 15-by-20-meter garden since she was first moved 
there 13 years ago, said that human beings had to leave their lives in God's 
hands. 

"My body will die, but if we are close to God in our hearts, we shall have 
eternal life in heaven after death," said Sumiarsih, who lives alone in her Blok 
IV cell at Sukun. 

She said she was still hoping to have her sentence commuted because, as a 
human being, she still wants to repent and make redress for her past mistakes. 

However, as a devout Christian, she believes that if God still wants her to 
live, she will be spared. 

Despite her claim that she does not know whether her request for clemency and 
judicial review of her case have been refused, she always looks bright and 
spirited every time anyone shows interest in the garden. 

Dressed in the blue prison inmates' uniform, Sumiarsih, with drops of sweat 
falling from her brow due to the scorching sun, explained in detail the 
efficacy of 59 medicinal plants that she has grown herself and has been taking care 
of for the past 13 years. 

"The flowers of this plant are good for leukorrhea. Take several buds and a 
glass of water. Boil the buds in the water and then drink the concoction," said 
Sumiarsih, pointing to a white pomegranate tree growing in one corner of the 
garden. 

Sumiarsih also explained the benefits of other plants, which she said were 
good for breast cancer, asthma, heart trouble, migraine, lung trouble, toothache 
and snakebite. 

"When the time for my execution has come, I hope someone else will continue 
what I have started," she said, smiling wanly. 

Sumiarsih and her son, Sugeng, were found guilty of the murder of Marines Lt. 
Col. Purwanto and four members of his family. Sumiarsih's son-in-law, Adi 
Saputro, has already been executed. Her husband, Djais Adi Prayitno, died of an 
illness in prison in 2001. 

The murder victims were placed in a jeep belonging to Purwanto and the 
vehicle later dumped in a valley somewhere in Songgoriti, Malang, to create the 
impression that Purwanto and the other four had died in a traffic accident. 

The appeal ruling of East Java High Court dated April 18, 1989, confirmed the 
original verdict of Surabaya district court. The ruling of the Supreme Court 
also rejected the final appeal filed by the convicts. 

An initial request for clemency was turned down by president Soeharto on June 
28, 1995. A request for judicial review of the case was also rejected. A 
second request for clemency was also rejected by president Megawati. 

A spokesman from the Attorney General's Office said recently a third request, 
to President Yudhoyono, had also been turned down. Sumiarsih's execution now 
seems inevitable. 

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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