Logging and palm oil in Borneo

[Guest guest]

Illegal logging invites disaster, but meanwhile there

is money to be made

By Lousie Williams

August 28, 2004

Why would a South Korean company want to build a

highway in a remote region of Indonesia, where no road

project could ever turn a profit? For the same reason

Malaysian and Indonesian companies are so eager to

invest in palm oil in areas with soil so poor the

palms will perish.

Development projects come with a lucrative piece of

paper: a permit to clear the forest. It is Indonesia's

high-value tropical logs, not dubious business

opportunities, investors want. The proposed South

Korean road, for example, has shoulders two kilometres

wide. Over the past 10 years about 8 million hectares

of Indonesia's tropical forests have, ostensibly, made

way for palm oil, coffee, rubber and cocoa

plantations. Only about 1.2 million hectares of crops

were even planted.

Tropical forests are shrinking alarmingly, but global

demand for wood products is soaring. In such a

challenging business environment, timber suppliers are

simply innovating.

Asia's most significant remaining tropical forests are

in Indonesia. Early European visitors to Borneo

described a towering canopy so dense that an

orang-utan could travel hundreds of kilometres through

the tree tops without touching the ground. Between

1985 and 2001 more than half the protected lowland

forests in Kalimantan, or Indonesian Borneo, were

destroyed. Recent dire predictions from Yale

University suggest Indonesia will have no lowland

forests left intact within a decade.

Jakarta has drastically reduced the legally permitted

cut. But three-quarters of Indonesia's timber is now

simply harvested illegally, much of it inside national

parks, with the illicit approval of local officials

who share in the kickbacks. " Timber launderers " send

many illegal logs across the land border on the island

of Borneo to Malaysia, where they vanish under

" Product of Malaysia " labels. Loggers are also opening

up new fronts elsewhere, especially in remote,

pristine forests of Papua.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri says she wants the

death penalty introduced for illegal logging. Her

Environment Ministry is considering radical measures

such as spiking national parks; that is, literally

booby trapping trees with giant spikes that break

chainsaws and can injure or kill loggers. And

money-laundering laws introduced last year mean banks

can be prosecuted for accepting funds from illegal

logging operations.

But part of the problem is weak, or non-existent, law

enforcement. Environmentalists say land clearing is

actually accelerating, because a new generation of

post-Soeharto officials are scrambling to claim their

share of the spoils.

Corruption does, undoubtedly, facilitate illegal

logging, but the real driving force is demand.

In 1998, following the deaths of more than 4000 people

in floods blamed on deforestation, China introduced a

widespread ban on logging. Since then, its imports of

forest products have more than doubled to over $US13

billion ($18.5 billion) a year. China's factories

devour almost one and a half times the entire volume

of wood cut annually in Indonesia alone. Much of

Indonesia's illegally harvested wood is re-exported

from China to Western markets as furniture.

Indonesia's own forest products industry has a

capacity of 50 million cubic metres of wood, yet the

legal cut is only 10 million cubic metres.

" China has solved some of its own environmental

problems, but has to a certain extent exported them, "

said David Kaimowitz, director-general of the Centre

for International Forestry Research.

" The huge growth in demand for forest products in

China is fuelling illegal logging, especially in areas

with weak controls like Indonesia and eastern Russia. "

Clear felling without replanting is, obviously,

self-limiting; but not before large-scale forest

destruction has done immeasurable environmental,

social and economic damage. Indonesia's tropical

forests shelter between 10 and 20 per cent of the

globe's plant and animal species, many of them

endangered. Forest degradation has also established a

fire cycle that spreads smoke haze across much of

South-East Asia every year. In 1997, Indonesia's

massive forest fires generated 8 per cent of the

world's carbon emissions.

Indonesia's sawmills are in sharp decline because of a

shortage of large trees, forcing a shift to pulp and

paper. Illegal logging is about money. As tropical

timber gets scarcer, its value will only continue to

rise. Punitive measures alone will never override

economic incentive. Only getting more wood onto the

market, by establishing managed plantations, can take

the pressure off dwindling wilderness areas.

But, in a recent paper for the World Bank, the Centre

for International Forestry Research made an

additional, unusually specific, recommendation. Five

to 10 prominent public figures should be prosecuted -

but not executed - with as much international

publicity as possible.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/27/1093518095926.html?oneclick=true

 

 

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