The Jakarta Post.

Friday, Oktober 25, 2007

National News

Public oppose industrial forest plan 
Opposition to the government's industrial forest scheme (HTI) from various quarters is hindering
the efforts of the Forestry Ministry to have industrial plantations covering 9.5 million hectares by
2009.

Director general of forest protection and nature conservation at the forestry ministry, I Made
Subadia, said Wednesday that the resistance occurred because people were looking primarily at the
early stages in which the ministry logged forest areas before replacing the trees with ones having
more industrial potential.

Currently, Indonesia has around 3.7 million hectares of HTI area providing logs for paper and
several other timber-based industries in the country.

The ministry is now focusing on planting eucalyptus, albazia falcataria and acacia, which are the
varieties most in demand on the market.

"They are protesting because they realize that this was just an early part of the process that will
make the forests more useful," Subadia said

"Our main concern now is how to change people's perspective of the land clearing method, so we
can prevent unnecessary problems in the future."

Currently the ministry is involved in a dispute with the Riau Provincial Police over forest
concessions to Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper and Indah Kiat Pulp and Paper.

The Riau Police have accused the two paper giants of illegal logging in Riau's protected forests
and confiscated thousands of cubic meters of timber from them.

In response, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appointed a team, led by Coordinating Minister
for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo A.S, to investigate.

Separately, according to executive director of Greenomics Indonesia, Elfian Effendy, the NGO has
recorded 29 cases similar to the one in Riau this year, all involving the HTI scheme, mostly in
Sumatra.

He said the large number of cases showed that the Yudhoyono administration lacked vision on the
plantation concept.

"Now is the time for President Yudhoyono to ask the conflicting parties to adjust their perspectives
by discussing their views on the project implementation in order to reach a clear solution. They
should hurry or we will run out of time to develop this important project. Other countries in the
region have already shown a significant increase in their number of plantations," he told The
Jakarta Post.
Around 61 percent of the world's industrial timber plantations are located in Asia-Pacific countries
such as China, with 46.7 million hectares, India with 32.6 million hectares and Japan with 10.7
million hectares.