Multinational Monitor: What are the primary causes of deforestation in Indonesia?
Indro Tjahjono: Indonesia's deforestation has increased since 1966, with the change from Sukarno's civil regime to Suharto's military regime. While Sukarno was more nationalistic and favored an economic system closed to foreign investors, Suharto increased the country's foreign debt and introduced an open-economy system by inviting foreign investors to invest their capital in Indonesia. The Suharto plan seemed to be that the deteriorating economic condition and increasing debt was to be covered by the extractive economy, through mining natural resources and forests which were traded with low value-added.
This economic process, in fact, was only a continuation of the military's economic designs, previously evidenced in economic competition between the establishment and military groups. The military group, which felt that it deserved credit for freeing Indonesia from the Dutch, in 1945, has always sought rewards for its accomplishments. Military leaders pioneered the nationalization of Dutch companies, most importantly taking a dominant role in the oil company PERTAMINA (a merger between PERTAMIN and PERMINA).
With its success in the political power change of 1966, the military was able to realize its ambitions of dominating all extractive economic sectors. A military official, Mr. Soedjarwo, was appointed as the Forestry Minister. Logging concessions were given mostly to local and national military figures, without regard to professional qualifications. In fact, these military people later sold their concessions to ethnic Chinese businessmen who mostly have the ethic of traders, rather than of loggers or foresters. The traders' aim was to sell trees rather than to manage the forests. This is the political background of the forestry mismanagement which has caused deforestation in Indonesia.
Meanwhile, the government designates revenue from the forest to pay debts. Through political maneuvering, forest income has become the nation's second largest source of foreign exchange revenue, after oil. The goal of earning enough foreign exchange to pay off the interest on outstanding loans so the government can take out new loans has turned the supposedly long-term timber business into a short-term one. It accelerates deforestation beyond the capacity of reforestation.
All of the forest policies and management systems are oriented towards those goals. Forest inventory has not been conducted properly, and the forest management system known as TPTI (Indonesian Selective Cutting and Planting Systems) was implemented in a vast area without any pilot programs to test it. The negative result was revealed in a follow-up study on the impacts of logging under TPTI. The study found that, as a result of logging, 18.5 cubic meters of timber per hectare is destroyed and 347.50 square meters of land per hectare is opened and threatened by erosion. Since 1970, the deforestation rate has increased from 550,000 hectares per year to more than 1.5 million hectares per year.
In 1971, amidst mounting concern that the economy of Indonesia would collapse as a result of increasing debt, President Suharto openly stated that the Indonesian people did not need to worry about paying debts, because the country's forest was still extensive enough to pay them off. Suharto's statement also indicated that income from the forestry sector would be used to support the progress of other sectors. And so timber tycoons began to emerge. They use the timber business to generate capital for other businesses, making forestry a strategic sector. Over time, the position of timber businessmen became stronger, and the position of the Department of Forestry weakened, so that now it only serves as an assistant to business interests working in collaboration with the political-military elite.
Since the moment of Suharto's statement, the government has suffered from a "denial syndrome," that is, the refusal to acknowledge the scenario of environmental destruction which environmentalists have described.
Multinational Monitor: What strategy does SKEPHI propose to protect Indonesia's forests?
Tjahjono: Since 1986, SKEPHI has reduced its involvement in the carrying out of conservation programs. Since that time, SKEPHI has emphasized policy reform and putting pressure on the government. The advocacy program is conducted as part of an effort to promote policy reforms by highlighting successful examples of forest conservation in the field. Our program includes campaign organizing and generating international pressure to influence policy in the Indonesian forestry sector. International pressure is needed to empower the environmental movement in a developing country which is in a weak position vis-a-vis military power.
Multinational Monitor: What should the role of indigenous people in protecting Indonesia's forests be, and what sorts of protections for indigenous people's rights does SKEPHI advocate?
Tjahjono: Indigenous people's role in forest conservation goes virtually unrecognized in Indonesia. The Basic Forestry Act (UUPK) subordinates traditional laws and rights over land to the development interest. Thus, the government gives out logging concessions (called HPH) on traditional indigenous lands, forcing the eviction of indigenous people.
SKEPHI thinks that the role of indigenous people in forest protection is very substantial. Their traditional laws and rights must be recognized. The geographical boundaries of their territory must also be delineated and recognized through participatory mapping programs. Through seminars, campaigns, advocacy efforts and direct action, SKEPHI works to protect indigenous people's rights. SKEPHI also helped indigenous people in Indonesia form an indigenous peoples' organization. This is the foundation for all activities that empower the political position of indigenous people and protect their rights. SKEPHI also helps organize indigenous people in the course of working on specific cases of abuses of indigenous rights.
Multinational Monitor: How do you view the forest-protection strategies, such as the creation of protected reserves and debt-for-nature swaps, advocated by many environmentalists?
Tjahjono: The forest protection strategy of developing protected reserves is not effective at all. Protected reserves are maintained to mask deforestation in other areas. And, in Indonesia, the protected reserve areas are increasingly reduced as a result of development activities permitted by the government. At present, mining of cement material, gold and sand, plantations, logging concessions, highway development and other developmental projects are carried out in protected reserves. Protected reserves are sometimes converted to timber estates on the grounds that the reserves' condition is already bad. (Under Indonesian regulations, timber estates may only be developed on critical lands.) Many protected reserves are deliberately allowed to deteriorate in order to justify the conversion.
Perhaps to rehabilitate the over-exploited forests of Indonesia, debt-for-nature swaps may be more effective. Deforestation is indeed connected to payment of debt and interest on debt to the lending countries. But the agenda of debt-for-nature swaps should not become an effort to solve the problem only partially. Debt-for-nature swaps must be connected with complete elimination of the Third World debt, which Southern countries find very difficult to pay. Globally, a new world economic system that guarantees nature conservation must be created. Thus, responsibility for nature conservation can be evenly borne between countries of the North and South. This must be followed with sectoral reforms in trading, technology transfer, protection of intellectual property rights and other bilateral and multilateral agreements.
Advocacy efforts by environmentalists are effective in anticipating management and policies in forestry, including technical and other microproblems. But advocacy can never guarantee long-term reforms and solutions. There must be a political agenda in the form of structural reform at both national and global levels. The political agenda will include the arrangement of fair relationships between developed and developing countries, regulation of down-stream and up-stream industries, and democratization of public decision-making. In this case, democratization includes the promotion of people's right to control the use of natural resources which exist in their surrounding area.
Multinational Monitor: The government has been promoting the development of a domestic pulp-and-paper industry as a means to derive more value from logged trees. How do you view that effort?
Tjahjono: The Indonesian government has promoted the pulp-and-paper industry at a time when the country is in the grim financial situation of paying back international loans. Indonesian decision-makers saw the global requirement for pulp and paper, a result of the growth of the information industry, as a great opportunity, and they decided to give the industry a go without careful calculation. In fact, the industry has to compete with the existing plywood industry for resources, i.e. natural forests. SKEPHI's analysis is that the pulp-and-paper industry has reached a capacity that cannot come close to being satisfied by the allocated natural forests. Coupled with the fact that the Selective Cutting and Plantation Tree program crashed due to unavailability of replacement trees, then it is just natural to expect the pulp-and-paper industry to rely on illegal logging. PT Indah Kiat, the country's largest pulp-and-paper company, was recently fined 3 billion rupiah [$1.5 million] for this type of crime, and the company is also known for illegally acquiring timber intended for non-forestry needs, such as plantations, transmigration, mining, housing development, etc. It is obvious that forests are at real risk of such moves of unjustifiable conversion.
In the last two years the pulp-and-paper industry has silently tripled its production, in an effort to secure market share. This led to a sharp increase in illegal logging. Since the current timber estates may only be cultivated in the year 2000, the government can confidently anticipate the threats the pulp and paper companies pose to protected forests. With their firm determination to secure sufficient supplies of trees at any price, and the government regulators virtually powerless, intensive removal of trees from Indonesian soil is imminent.
Multinational Monitor: One of the government's forest protection strategies is the creation of tree plantations. How do you assess that strategy?
Tjahjono: Timber estates or tree plantations are of course an attractive alternative when the market demand for pulp and paper is estimated to increase. But the timber estate concept contradicts the polyculture principle of tropical forest conservation. Timber estates will be inclined to use exotic trees, which contradicts the principle of biological diversity conservation. Indonesia's formal policy is only to allow timber estates on critical, or environmentally deteriorating, lands. But, in practice, timber estates are permitted in logged-over lands or in natural forest areas.
A systematic conversion of tropical forests to timber estates is taking place. Moreover, the funds to exploit the timber estates are taken from the funds which were allocated for regreening the leftover forests after HPH logging. Timber estate companies can utilize the funds through a zero percent interest credit. Timber estate companies have used this zero percent interest credit to finance their unrelated businesses.
The timber estate target itself has never been reached simply because loggers refuse to confine themselves to critical regions. SKEPHI contests any timber estate program which will eventually lead to the degradation of the tropical forests' biodiversity, and the acceleration of the conversion to monocultural forests.
Multinational Monitor: How effective is the government's forest protection regulatory system?
Tjahjono: The government through its Department of Forestry is in charge of regulating logging activities at the national level. This control system is not working properly, due to collusion between government officials and loggers. Logging companies usually work with military people in carrying out illegal logging, so it is difficult for the officials in the field to refuse to participate in corrupt activities.
Here is an example of a common corrupt practice. Loggers, with the knowledge of the regulating agency, use one log transportation document for sending four to seven times the amount of logs listed in the document. As a result, the average actual logging is five times the volume approved by the Department of Forestry. The volume difference is usually filled with logs obtained from conservation forests.
That is not the only example of corruption. The penalty system, which is supposed to be carried out by the Department of Forestry, is often crippled by none other than the president's exclusive circle. Loggers with access to, or involved in business with, the president's family or other important figures, are virtually "the untouchables." Here's an example: when the Department of Forestry discovered that PT Barito Pacific Timber (the First Family business) was engaged in illegal logging, it levied a 1.2 billion rupiah [$600,000] fine against the company, but the company agreed only to pay a tenth of the amount, and that was it.
Some other factors have successfully contributed to making the regulatory system a complete comedy: the tiny budget allocated for it, the chronic shortage of staff, the lack of modern supports such as a satellite camera, wicked personnel and barely any law enforcement.
Multinational Monitor: The campaign against Scott Paper's plans to create a eucalyptus plantation and pulp mill on Irian Jaya received a lot of international attention and support. How successful was that campaign?
Tjahjono: In cooperation with overseas non-governmental organizations (NGOs), SKEPHI won a major victory in preventing the takeoff of Scott Paper's joint venture plans with PT Astra in Irian Jaya.
The company felt more pressure from overseas than from inside Indonesia. As a huge and established corporation, it is immersed in international markets; potential repercussions in the environment-conscious world markets forced the company to review the project. Unfortunately, however, this interesting story has not triggered meaningful development of domestic environmental awareness. SKEPHI, which strongly supported the anti-Scott campaign, has been branded a "radical NGO" by the government and some major NGOs.
This led to a situation where the issue has split the Indonesian NGO community as well as the SKEPHI organization.
The majority of NGOs in Indonesia argued that the Scott Paper plant in Irian Jaya would boost the local economy and therefore labeled SKEPHI as non-cooperative. The obvious reason for their disapproval is their unrealized expectation of self-interested gain. They had been dreaming of enjoying some of the handsome funds to be provided by the Scott-Astra joint-venture. Church-affiliated NGOs had expected the project to facilitate missionary work, and the church had even prepared indigenous people to be employed by Scott-Astra had the plant been realized.
A key factor in the success of the anti-Scott campaign was international interest in Irian Jaya as the largest tropical forest with indigenous people in Indonesia. International activists referred to Irian Jaya as "Indonesia's Amazon" and proposed that the region be declared a World Heritage Site.
Multinational Monitor: As Indonesia industrializes, what are some of the major new environmental problems it is facing?
Tjahjono: Tropical forest conservation is not the only environmental problem in Indonesia related to industrialization. Other areas include: raw materials depletion; the land requirements for both the supply of raw materials and industrial sites; and industrial waste discharge, which is inflicting almost irreversible damage on tropical seas and rivers once rich with living organisms.
Forest and geological problems arising from the mining industry (gold, cement, copper) are common across the country. One monumental case involves the U.S. company Freeport McMoran. Freeport operates in Irian Jaya, where its huge site clearing and waste discharge is severely damaging the environment.
Another serious problem involves the government's moving of indigenous people to other locations in the name of resettlement or transmigration programs. This is an ongoing and never-ending source of heartbreaking stories.
On top of these problems, industrialization demands a higher supply of energy. In anticipation of this growing demand, the government is now planning to build a nuclear-fired energy generator in Central Java.