Press Release

Contact:
 Adlai Amor, Media Director
 Tel: (+1-202) 729-7736 Email: aamor@wri.org

New WRI Report Warns of Continuing Destruction of Indonesia's Forests

WASHINGTON, DC, July 19, 2000 - As the forest fire season rages in Indonesia, a highly critical report from the World Resources Institute warns that these fires will continue to occur unless the government makes drastic changes on how to manage the country's remaining forests.

"Current Indonesian forest policies have provided powerful legal incentives for 'cut-and-run' resource extraction," said Dr. Charles V. Barber, one of the authors of the report, Trial by Fire: Forest Fires and Forestry Policy in Indonesia's Era of Crisis and Reform. "They have failed to create effective mechanisms for enforcing even minimum standards of forest resource stewardship."

The report, co-published by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Indonesia and Telapak Indonesia Foundation, examines the destruction and systematic plunder of Asia's greatest rainforests under former Indonesian president Suharto. During his 32-year rule, Indonesia lost at least 40 million hectares of forests, equivalent to the combined size of Germany and the Netherlands.

Much of these forests were granted as timber concessions to Suharto's cronies, his family and to ill-fated government projects like the failed effort to convert one million hectares of peat swamp forests in Central Kalimantan into rice fields. In the 1990s, oil palm and timber plantations replaced additional millions of hectares of forest. Illegal logging has become so prevalent, accounting for an estimated half of the annual production.

The WRI report focuses on the 1997-1998 forest fires in Indonesia that resulted in the burning of 10 million hectares of forests. The smoke shrouded many towns in darkness at noon and exposed 20 million people across Southeast Asia to harmful smoke-borne pollutants for months. According to the government, total losses in 1997 because of forest fires reached as much as US$9.3 billion. This is more than double the combined damages assessed in the Exxon Valdez oil spill and India's Bhopal disaster.

Many of these fires were deliberately set by plantation owners who take advantage of the dry season to clear the forests and plant export crops like palm oil. The problem was worsened by a drought induced by the periodic El Niņo climatic phenomenon, which was particularly severe that year. Scientists predict that El Niņo will reoccur within the next few years, increasing the chances for more fires.

"The forest fires of 1997 and 1998 were just the latest symptom of a destructive system of forest resource management carried out by the former Suharto regime over 30 years," said Dr. Barber. He stressed that in order to prevent future infernos, the solution lies in the major restructuring of relationships between the state, the private sector and the millions of forest-dependent peoples living in the nation's forests.

Among others, the WRI report recommends:

  • Instituting a moratorium on new concessions for oil palm, timber and other plantations until a national inventory of permanent forest estate is completed;

  • Strengthening rules and penalties against clearing plantations with fire;

  • Declaring a five-year moratorium on the transmigration program and re-examining the objectives and methods of this massive resettlement program;

  • Granting legal protection of forest ownership and use by indigenous peoples and assisting them to manage the forests sustainably;

  • Granting clear legal protection as permanent forest estate to all remaining forested areas in Indonesia;

  • Establishing effective mechanisms for independent citizen monitoring of trends and threats related to forest lands and resources.

"The key question is whether government forest policy will lead and smooth the way for these changes, or will be dragged along by popular action - which is likely to turn increasingly violent - at the grassroots," said WRI president Jonathan Lash.