OUR
VIEWPOINT
-
‘High Conservation Value Forests’ in an international
context
Ever
since its foundation 20 years ago, the World Rainforest Movement
(WRM) has stood for bottom-up efforts to protect the world’s forests
against destructive development and top-down planning. We challenge
imposed ‘solutions’ to the world’s forest crisis which exclude
local communities, indigenous peoples, women and the oppressed
by denying them a voice and rights to forge their own destinies.
We continue to insist that even well-intentioned efforts to ‘save
the rainforests’ will fail if they are not rights-based and genuinely
participatory. The NGOs that set up the WRM at two conferences
in Malaysia in 1986 and 1987 adopted the credo ‘We are not the
solution. The solutions lie with the people.’
Things
have not changed much since then. We still live in a world where
unfair laws mean that community rights to lands and forests are
often un-recognised and ill-secured, where governments tend to
favour the interests of large companies and capital-intensive
enterprises, where access to justice is tortuous and an independent
judiciary a distant dream, and where politicians tend to pander
to the rich and overlook the voices of the poor and powerless.
The continuing inequalities between North and South and the growing
disparities in wealth within both ‘developed’ and ‘developing’
countries pose further obstacles to landless and forest-dependent
peoples securing just and equitable access to natural resources.
In such a world, political reforms and improved ‘governance’ to
give people a greater stake in decision-making should be a priority.
The WRM stands with those civil society groups that call for mandatory
controls, corporate accountability, rule of law and improved state
capacity to regulate the private sector.
Unfortunately,
but in line with corporate interests, the main trends in ‘world
development’ are working in the opposite direction. We are still
in an era of deregulation and structural adjustment, trade liberalisation
and accelerated transfers of capital, goods and services. In this
context, to wait for much-needed political reforms in both developed
and developing countries, may be to wait too long. The rate of
destruction of the world’s forests continues to increase, despite
reassuring statistics from FAO technocrats showing the opposite,
as they fail to distinguish between natural forests and the industrial
mono-crops that are being planted to replace them.
This
is the context in which efforts to improve the social and environmental
performance of corporations through the promotion of Corporate
Social Responsibility and market-led reforms have moved centre
stage. And not surprisingly these voluntary approaches, which
imply the development of voluntary standards and codes of conduct
applied through self-regulation, peer review and third party verification,
continue to be preferred by industry over strict, enforceable,
mandatory state controls. The main civil society organisations
that are pushing these voluntary approaches are the large conservation
agencies, while human rights groups and social justice organisations,
community groups and indigenous peoples have tended to stay clear
of them, with the result that social issues are often poorly addressed.
This
issue of the WRM Bulletin thus focuses attention on the renewed
debate about ‘High Conservation Value Forests’ (HCVF), a conceptual
tool being increasingly used by big conservation NGOs and corporations,
and now also by State planning agencies, to zone forested landscapes
in order to optimise forest management. How is this tool being
applied? Whose interests are ‘optimised’? What guarantees are
there that communities’ rights are respected and their voices
heard in decisions about land use?
The
HCVF concept was first promoted by the Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC) as a way of providing extra protection to critically important
forests. Many conservation NGOs hoped that the concept would be
used to establish 'no go' areas, off limits to logging and conversion.
Meanwhile, in defining the concept more precisely it was realised
that ‘high conservation values’ are as much social as biological
and so six types of HCVF were identified - as forests that were
critical habitats, critical ecosystems, contained threatened and
endangered species, provided critical environmental services,
were critical for livelihoods, and critical for the maintenance
of cultural values. This is unquestionably a strength of the HCVF
approach – that it seeks to include a broad range of values and
requires a participatory approach to their identification.
Although
the HCVF concept was developed within the context of timber certification,
as just one of 10 of the FSC Principles and Criteria, it has since
begun to be used much more broadly. The FSC itself is applying
the concept to non-certified woods (but ‘controlled wood’) that
it permits can be used in mixed wood products that still carry
the FSC label. The concept is also being used by corporations
very broadly as a tool to help them decide where they should responsibly
source timbers. Others now use it to decide where they should
and should not establish plantations. The Roundtable on Sustainable
Palm Oil has adopted the concept into its newly adopted standard
for ‘sustainable palm oil’ production and efforts are underway
to introduce the concept into the standard being adopted by the
parallel Roundtable on Responsible Soy. The World Bank is also
exploring how the concept can be applied to help it define what
are the ‘critical forests’ and ‘critical habitats’ that its policies
on forests and natural habitats are meant to safeguard. In short,
HCV has emerged as a widely applied tool in land use planning,
with all the possibilities and risks that this implies.
Experience
teaches us that land use planning and zoning tools, however much
they are promoted as ‘multi-stakeholder’ methods, can rarely be
fully inclusive, as they imply a degree of ‘top-down’, planning.
Outsiders’ efforts to involve local people always face challenges
due to limited time and resources, language barriers, unconscious
or overt prejudices and preconceptions and the economic and political
marginalisation of ‘target groups’. And the larger the scale of
such zoning - and the more that reliance is placed on hi-tech,
like GIS-based mapping - the greater are the risks that local
communities’ rights, interests, visions and knowledge will get
overlooked.
Questions
are also raised by the wider implications of the HCV approach
if it comes to be applied on its own without being implanted in
a broader approach to landscape planning. Is there a risk that
when an area is deemed not to contain HCV then it is considered
OK to log, mine or convert it? How do we avoid the nightmare scenario
of islands of ‘high conservation value’ being surrounded by devastated
‘sacrifice zones’?
Aware
of some of these pitfalls, a new network has now been established
– the High Conservation Value Resources Network – which aims to
debate these challenges and find agreed ways of overcoming them,
though still within the voluntary, business-friendly context preferred
by corporations.
Protecting
‘High Conservation Values’ is a worthy goal, but if this is done
in ways that do not respect communities rights or promote their
priorities it can also be a dangerous threat for people and nature
both inside and outside the areas defined as having High Conservation
Values. This issue of the WRM Bulletin is offered as a contribution
to this debate.
Marcus
Colchester
index
THE
NEED FOR DECISIONS
-
High Conservation Values: to get or not involved?
Whenever
a new process begins, NGOs need to decide on whether to get or
not involved in it. Such is now the case with the High Conservation
Value (HCV) approach and with the HCV Resource Network.
The
editorial above highlights a number of major issues which need
to be further discussed in order to make an informed decision
regarding engaging –or not- in this.
The
first issue raised is that there are two major –and opposite-
approaches for private sector control: self-regulation and mandatory
state controls. The WRM demands mandatory controls, corporate
accountability, rule of law and improved state capacity to regulate
the private sector, while corporations promote voluntary standards
and codes of conduct. Reality is showing that the latter approach
is currently prevailing. The HCV must be seen as part of this
approach.
There
is therefore a need for a discussion about the benefits and drawbacks
that may derive from participating in this arena and about the
possibility and/or advisability of the future incorporation of
HCV to country legislation to make it mandatory.
A
second important issue raised in the editorial is the risk that
when an area is deemed not to contain HCV then it may be
logged, mined or converted to other activities. This is a very
real risk and NGOs participating in this arena may eventually
become involuntary responsible for social and environmental degradation
in non-HCV areas.
Coupled
with the above, is the also very real threat about the “nightmare
scenario” of islands of ‘high conservation value’ being surrounded
by devastated ‘sacrifice zones’. This is actually common practice
in many countries, where governments open up large tracts of land
for unsustainable productive activities and justify this by declaring
other areas as “protected”. The HCV approach may further strengthen
such policies.
The
above implies another discussion about how any part of nature
or society can be considered as having “low” conservation value
–by default, everything not defined as “high” will be “low”- and
if anyone has the right to define categories such as those.
There
is also the issue about how this tool is being applied, about
who’s interests it serves better and about guarantees regarding
the respect for communities’ rights in decisions about land use.
Another
crucial issue is time. How much of their time should NGO activists
dedicate to every process that comes up –and keep coming up? How
many millions of working hours have processes such as the World
Bank Forest Policy Review, the Intergovernmental Panel and Forum
on Forests, the Forest Stewardship Council and many others consumed?
How much of that effort has been useful for forest communities?
Would it not be wiser to focus on our own agendas –for instance
community forests- instead of reacting to government and corporate
initiatives?
In
relation to that, this new process –the HCV- and its related HCV
Resource Network, are demanding time and resources to debate challenges
such as the above –and others- and to find ways of overcoming
them –as the editorial says- “within the voluntary, business-friendly
context preferred by corporations” –with almost limitless financial
resources at their disposal.
As
with many other processes, decisions need to be made regarding
this new one: why organizations should -or should not- become
involved, how much time and resources–if any- should be dedicated
to it, if to try to influence it from inside or from outside -or
to ignore it. But we must all bear in mind that the process exists
and that we need to be aware about its possible consequences.
Ricardo
Carrere
index
A TOOLKIT AND A NETWORK
-
The HCVF Toolkit: the right tool for the
wrong job?
The
notion of High Conservation Value Forest was originally developed
as a key principle within the revised standard of the Forest Stewardship
Council issued in 1999. However guidance on how such forests should
be identified was scarce and not well consolidated. In 2002, the
conservation organisation WWF and the retail company IKEA, as
part of a three-year cooperative programme, decided to fund a
small project to develop guidance on how HCVF should be defined,
identified and managed. To this end they contracted Proforest,
an ‘independent company, working with natural resource management
and specialising in practical approaches to sustainability’, to
carry out this work. During 2002, Proforest convened a small group
of people with very varied expertise in social and environmental
issues to draft a ‘tool kit’, which was circulated in draft form
in late 2002. Over the coming months Proforest then carried out
trial applications of, and consultations about, the tool kit in
Romania, Bulgaria, China, Mongolia and Indonesia. The result was
The High Conservation Value Forest Toolkit which was issued in
December 2003. It comprises a simple guide to forest managers
and landscape planners to help them apply the concept in managing
forests.
As
designed by the original team convened to draft the ‘Toolkit’,
the guide was to be used within the broader framework of principles
and criteria set out in the Forest Stewardship Council’s standard.
These standards require that forest managers: comply with relevant
national and ratified international laws; have clear tenure rights
or act with the consent of legal or customary rights-holders;
respect indigenous peoples’ rights; have good relations with workers
and local communities; manage forests to achieve multiple benefits;
conserve biological diversity and maintain forest integrity; according
to a demonstrable and effectively applied management plan, which
monitored and evaluated. The tool kit was thus conceived as being
applied at a local level (within ‘Forest Management Units’), by
communities and foresters who were seeking FSC certification of
their forest products. This also meant that the Tool Kit did not
have to repeat management requirements already set out in the
other FSC standards – legality, respect for indigenous rights,
effective community participation, sound environmental management,
good labour relations etc etc – all these were already meant to
have been taken care of by operators in complying with the other
parts of the FSC standard. HCVF was thus seen as an ‘add on’ –
an extra layer of precaution designed to protect areas with especially
important values. It also meant that application of the HCVF concept
would be subject to independent verification by a third party,
since this was required for all aspects of the FSC standard.
However,
even by the end of 2003, it was clear that companies and NGOs
were using the HCVF concept, and the Tool Kit, outside the FSC
framework. It began to be used for wider landscape planning, both
to guide resource exploitation and conservation initiatives. Companies,
frustrated by the shortage of certified timber in the market,
were seeking to apply the HCVF method to guide their purchasing
policies. If they couldn’t buy certified timber, they thought,
at least, they could use the HCVF method to ensure they weren’t
sourcing from the most critical forests.
Of
course the risks in this approach are obvious. In the first place,
it could sustain or even intensify pressure on forest areas declared
not to be ‘HCVF’. Secondly, it means that the other requirements
of the FSC system could be lost sight of. HCVF is now being applied
at a very broad scale, to zone whole landscapes or countries not
just at the level of the Forest Management Unit. Working at such
a large scale makes due consultation with local communities almost
impossible – and this automatically leads to an abuse of the HCVF
approach. After all, the HCVF concept is meant to protect forest
areas ‘fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities’
and ‘critical to local communities’ cultural identities’. As the
Tool Kit makes clear such areas can only be determined by consultation
with the peoples concerned – no one else knows what areas people
consider important to their cultures and livelihoods. Without
community involvement in zoning, it will be inevitable that outsiders
will overlook or ignore areas considered vital by local people.
Thirdly, it implies that there is no longer any requirement to
comply with other crucial requirements of good forest management.
Companies buying timbers from areas zoned by the HCVF method could
unwittingly be buying from illegal operators, such as those which
abuse indigenous rights, harm local communities, exploit their
workforces or destroy local environments, as the HCVF approach
does not look into such matters, being narrowly focused on only
ascertaining which forests have ‘high conservation value’. And,
finally, with the HCVF approach being applied outside the FSC
framework, there is no longer a requirement for third party independent
verification. In other words, the release of the HCVF concept
from the FSC framework has opened a Pandora’s box of risks.
The newly formed ‘High Conservation
Value Resource Network’ was, in part at least, established to
deal with some of these dilemmas. Its mission is ‘to maintain
and enhance critical social and environmental values of forests
and other ecosystems as part of responsible land management, and
to advance locally adaptable management strategies through the
development and use of the high conservation value (HCV) approach’.
The HCV Resource Network is overseen and directed by a Steering
Group, while management of the day-to-day activities are undertaken
by a Secretariat based in the United Kingdom.
The
Steering Group is composed of individuals from the following organizations:
-
ForestEthics
-
Forest Peoples Programme (FPP)
-
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC International)
-
Greenpeace International
-
International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)
-
MONDI [a South African pulp and paper company]
-
Tetra Pak
-
The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
-
Centro de Investigaciones Antropologicas, Universidad Nacional
Experimental de Guayana, Venezuela (CIAG-UNEG)
-
World Bank (WB)
-
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
-
World Conservation Union (IUCN)
-
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF International)
The
Secretariat, is run by ProForest, a company based in Oxford, United
Kingdom, while the network is currently funded through WWF agreements
with Ikea, Tetra Pak and the World Bank.
The Network has been
set up to encourage dialogue between concerned parties, is open
to all, and only requires of ‘participants’ that they endorse
a short ‘Charter’ which sets out the mission, structure and guiding
principles of the Network. As well as encouraging information
sharing and discussion to promote a responsible application of
the HCV approach, the Network also aims to encourage open assessment
of such application through participatory and inclusive monitoring,
the use of the precautionary approach, peer review and public
reporting. The Charter also explicitly plans to develop a framework
to ensure legality; protection of local communities’ and indigenous
peoples’ customary and legal rights and respect for their right
to control what happens in their areas; protection of areas from
unjustified conversion; and, provision of further environmental
safeguards. Web-based discussion groups, open to all, have already
been launched to exchange views and information on these matters.
Sources:
Forest Peoples Programme,
info@forestpeoples.org,
www.forestpeoples.org,
http://hcvnetwork.org/ and
http://hcvnetwork.org/resource-network/the-network-s-charter
index
HCVF APPLICATION
IN PRACTICE
-
HCVF and the World Bank's Forests Policy
When
the World Bank adopted its new Forests Policy (OP 4.36) in 2002,
it stated that ‘the Bank does not finance projects that, in
its opinion, would involve significant conversion or degradation
of critical forest areas or related critical natural habitats’.
However, in the ensuing five years, despite repeated enquiries
from NGOs like the WRM, the World Bank has not been able to clarify
how it determines which areas are ‘critical’. All it has said
is that critical forests and critical habitats include existing
and officially proposed protected areas, culturally important
areas like sacred groves, ‘sites that maintain conditions vital
for the viability of protected areas’ and sites identified on
supplementary lists prepared by the Bank or by an authority it
recognises. The Bank’s 2001 ‘Natural Habitats’ policy only says
that ‘the Bank expects the Borrower to take into account the views,
roles and rights of groups, including NGOs and local communities.’
It
is clear that the World Bank still lacks a clear process for determining
what are ‘critical forests’, although this has not stopped it
from pouring money into forestry projects. A desk review carried
out by the Forest Peoples Programme of 21 forest-related
projects approved since early 2003, shows that the concepts of
‘critical forests’ and ‘critical natural habitats’ have been applied
in a very patchy way. The projects examined, which have a total
value of over US$ 1.3 billion dollars, are those listed by the
World Bank as affecting forests and the research was limited to
a review of those documents that are available on the World Bank’s
website.
Based
on what can be discerned from these documents, it seems that most
of the projects have not screened for ‘critical forests’ at all.
This includes the ‘Moldova Soil Conservation Project’ and the
Republic of Congo ‘Economic Recovery Credit’ even though the Bank
website lists them as forestry sector projects. The Azerbaijan
‘Rural Development Project’, which promotes the establishment
of national parks, community natural resource management schemes
and rural enterprises in an acknowledged ‘biodiversity hotspot’
in the Caucasus, will not attempt to screen for ‘critical forests’.
The China Changjiang/Pearl River Watershed Rehabilitation Project,
which involves extensive afforestation and land use planning,
is considered to have ‘triggered’ the Forests policy, although
not the Natural Habitats policy, but does not seek to identify
‘critical forests’, nor does the Philippines ‘Laguna de Bay Community
Watershed Rehabilitation Project’ screen for ‘critical forests’.
In
India the US$ 620 million ‘National Highways Project’, while classed
as a category A project - requiring maximal environment
assessment - is not considered to have ‘triggered’ the Forests
Policy and will not screen for ‘critical forests’. In this case,
the project preparation team also thought that the concept of
‘critical natural habitats’ was ‘not applicable’. Two projects
in Honduras, the ‘Forests and Rural Productivity Project’ and
the ‘Pico Bonito Sustainable Forests Project’ only seek to avoid
existing protected areas and buffer zones, with no evident efforts
to first identify which forests might be ‘critical’ from the point
of view of community livelihoods or from other points of view.
In the Benin ‘Forests and Adjacent Lands
Management Project’ and the Romania ‘Forest Development
Project’ there is no evidence that the ‘critical forests’ concept
are to be applied at all. In the Lao
‘Environment and Social Project’, which will affect wide areas
of the forested uplands where ‘activity locations will typically
be in close proximity to important natural habitats and in areas
inhabited by ethnic minorities’, Bank staff have not proposed
measures to screen for ‘critical forests’. In Gabon, the ‘Natural
Resource Management Development Policy Loan’, even though it will
support national planning capacity to develop the mining, oil
and gas, forestry, fisheries and conservation sectors, does not
screen for ‘critical forests’, while the complementary ‘Forest
and Environment Sector Project’ is presented as not resulting
in the ‘significant degradation or conversion of critical natural
habitats’. In Costa Rica a joint World Bank/GEF ‘Mainstreaming
Market Based Instruments for Environmental Management Project’,
‘is designed to comply fully with the letter and spirit of all
World Bank Safeguard Policies’, but project documents do not mention
any screening for ‘critical forests’.
Likewise,
in Cameroon, the World Bank’s ‘Forest
and Environment Sector Program’ does not apply the concept
of ‘critical forests’. Instead zoning is being carried out in
line with the (much criticised) national zoning system which allocates
lands to parks, logging and roadside communities, a process in
which forest dwellers are invisible. A progressive Indigenous
Peoples Plan elaborated as part of this project is not being implemented
effectively. In Vietnam, the ‘Forest Sector Development Project’
only screens for ‘critical natural habitats’, when developing
areas for plantations. The Madagascar
‘Third Environment Program Support Project’ is bizarrely recorded
as not ‘triggering’ the Forests policy even though it does trigger
the Natural Habitats policy and does seek to conserve Mikea forests.
The project thus does not seek to identify ‘critical forests’
though it is being developed within the framework of Madagascar’s
Environmental Action Programme. Even the progressive Albania ‘Natural
Resources Management Project’, which effectively promotes community
management of forests, does not apply the concept of ‘critical
forests’. The available documents for
the Kazakhstan ‘Forest Protection and Reforestation Project’,
which aims to enhance forest development country-wide show that
the project team have decided the safeguard policy on Forests
is not triggered and they have not yet decided whether the Natural
Habitats policy applies. No screening for ‘critical forests’ is
mentioned.
There
do seem to have been three exceptions to this tale of non-compliance.
The first is the Bosnia-Herzegovina ‘Forest Development and Conservation
Project’ which explicitly includes a Technical Assistance component
co-funded by the German aid agency, GTZ. This will extend the
usual forest inventory study in order to identify critical forest
ecosystems, explicitly described as ‘High Conservation Value Forests’
for forest and biodiversity conservation. The second is the Tanzania ‘Eastern Arc Forests Conservation and Management Project’ which
seeks to identify critical watershed forests, montane forests
and miombo woodlands, which are identified as important
to local livelihoods including as a source of fuelwood. The
Mexico ‘Second Community
Forestry Project’ also plans to include screening to avoid any
interference with critical forest areas and critical natural habitats,
although it notes that the local institutional capacity for carrying
this out is limited. Exactly how this screening is to be done
is not made clear, however.
During
the evolution of its Forests Strategy the World Bank had proposed
that, in addition to its project level screening, it would also
carry out national assessments to identify ‘critical forests’.
This, it was planned, would be done as part of enhanced ‘Economic
and Sector Work’ and ‘Country Assistance Strategies’ that would
ensure that the new Forests Policy was applied broadly to all
Bank lending to a country. However, in the absence of a defined
process to identify what are ‘critical forests’ this has not occurred.
The
World Bank’s Forests Team is aware that one of the key elements
in its safeguard policy is not being applied consistently. Continuing
delays in the development of a ‘Sourcebook’, which was meant to
explain to staff how they should screen for impacts on ‘critical
forests’, have contributed to this problem (see WRM Bulletin 93).
The remedy now proposed by the Bank is to develop sound methods
for identifying ‘High Conservation Value Forests’, and for this
reason it is supporting the High Conservation Value Resource Network.
This makes it all the more important that the concept of High
Conservation Value is developed in a credible way, which ensures
that community interests and rights are properly respected and
given priority.
Source:
Forest Peoples Programme, info@forestpeoples.org,
www.forestpeoples.org
index
-
HCVF assessments in Riau, Sumatra
The
HCVF concept has been applied in Indonesia over the last five
years in attempts to identify and protect high conservation value
forests from conversion to pulp wood plantations. APP and APRIL,
the two largest pulp producers in Indonesia, have both responded
to market pressure orchestrated by WWF and Friends of the Earth
affiliates by conducting and commissioning HCVF assessments in
forest areas planned for conversion to Acacia plantations. While
some forest areas identified as having HCVFs have not been cleared,
both companies have continued clearing natural forests during
HCVF assessments and even of areas identified as HCV’s. Zulfahmi,
coordinator of Jikalahari (1), commented, “WWF
usually has problems in its attempts to get the pulp and paper
companies APP and APRIL to conserve HCVF. Both companies continued
to cut down forests in the Kampar Peninsular that had been identified
as having high conservation values.”
The
Kampar Peninsular in Riau, Sumatra, contains a vast peat swamp
area which is still habitat for endangered species such as the
Sumatran tiger and the swamp tree Ramin. However, the prospects
for these species and the whole peat swamp are poor if APP and
APRIL continue to clear large areas and drain the plantation areas
so that the surrounding peat forest dries out. An HCVF assessment
of the Kampar Peninsular by ProForest commissioned by APRIL did
not include an assessment of the conservation values relating
to community use and rights (HCVF 5 and 6), although traditional
communities and more recent immigrants have important ties to
the area.
In
other HCVF assessments in Riau, conservation values 5 and 6 relating
to community rights have been included but often the information
generated has been of poor quality, missing many forest values
of great importance to indigenous communities. This may have resulted
from lack of social experts in the assessment teams, but could
also be due to how community activities are perceived. For instance,
shifting cultivation, which is still practised by customary communities
throughout much of Indonesia, can have a low overall impact on
forests where communities maintain control of sufficient forest
areas. However, shifting cultivation has been vilified by foresters
for more than a century, and HCVF assessors tend to view the practice
as one that destroys forest and therefore not one indicating the
presence of conservation values 5 or 6. Community members
that have been questioned as part of HCVF assessments often have
little information about the process or how it could potentially
assist their efforts to secure their access to forests and traditional
livelihoods.
Another
problem with HCVF assessments in Riau has been the degree to which
the agenda of the pulp and paper companies - to obtain large areas
for conversion to pulpwood plantations - has influenced the approach
of the independent HCVF assessments that the companies commission.
In one instance known to me, an independent assessor was questioned
as to why his HCVF assessment of peat swamp forests scheduled
for conversion to pulp plantations had failed to consider government
regulations that protect areas with peat soils more than three
meters deep (2) . He responded that the assessment
was not a legality study and that it therefore did not have to
consider such regulations. When it was pointed out that his assessment
should also have reviewed whether or not the forest areas concerned
were degraded forests (3), i.e. areas that may
be converted to pulp wood plantations, the assessor responded
that if all such regulations were included in the HCVF assessment,
there might not be any forest areas that the company could convert
and plant its Acacia. The assessment was not revised to include
consideration of these regulations. So much for independence!
The
following recommendations would go some way to addressing these
shortcomings:
-
HCVF assessments
should always include all six conservation values;
-
HCVF assessments
should consider all relevant forestry regulations, especially
those designed to conserve natural forests;
-
Plans for an
HCVF assessment should be presented in the local language
to the public at the provincial and relevant local areas;
-
Draft and final
HCVF assessments should be available to interested parties;
-
Communities with
ties to the areas to be assessed should be helped to understand
the HCVF process before assessments take place.
The
Indonesian HCVF toolkit is currently being revised (4)
and hopefully the issues raised in this article will be addressed
in the updated toolkit.
Patrick
Anderson works in Jakarta with Walhi, the Indonesian Forum for
Environment. You can reach him at:
panderson@cbn.net.id
Notes:
1.
JIKALAHARI is a Riau NGO coalition
concerned with sustainable and just forest management. Its membership
includes 29 NGO’s.
2.
Presidential Decree (Keppres) No. 32/1990 regarding Area Management.
Articles 9 and 10 state that forests located atop peat soils with
a depth equal to or in excess of three meters must function as
Protected Peat Areas; also Ministry of Forestry Decree No. SK.101/Menhut-II/2004.
3.
Industrial pulp wood plantations may only be established on degraded
forests, defined as those which contain less than 20 cubic meters
per hectare for humid forests or 5 cubic meters per hectare for
dry forests. Relevant regulations are Government Regulation No.
7/1999 regarding HPHTI, Article 5, paragraphs 1 and 2; Government
Regulation No. 34/2002 regarding Forest Regulation and the Establishment
of Forest Plans, Forest Exploitation and Use, Article 30, paragraph
3; Ministerial Decree No. 10.1/Kpts-II/2000 regarding Guidelines
for Granting Permission for the Exploitation of Forest Products
in Forest Plantation Areas, Article 3, paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6 and 7; Annexes to the Ministerial Decree No. 21/Kpts-II/2000
regarding Criteria and Standards for Permission to Exploit HTI
in Production Forest Areas.
4.
The initiative to revise the Indonesian HCVF toolkit is being
funded by TNC, Tropenbos and WWF. The process over the next six
months will include small working groups of experts to draft the
revised toolkit and larger stakeholder meetings to provide input,
raise issues and propose amendments to the toolkit.
index
- The HCVF Application in
Indonesia
Indonesia
has some of the most biodiverse rainforests in the world, but
also the highest deforestation rate. The HCVF (high conservation
value forest) concept has taken hold in Indonesia as a means of
reconciling economic pressures to open up forest areas with the
need to reduce the rate of forest loss.
Several
NGOs have actively encouraged the use of the concept, integrating
HCVF within their ongoing work on conservation, sustainable forestry
and land use management, in collaboration with government ministries,
the private sector and local communities. The urgent objective
of applying the concept, as far as many are concerned, is to help
pre-empt forest conversion and the loss of biodiversity and social
values that accompanies it.
HCVF
assessment represents an embryonic concept introduced and promoted
by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – originally intended
for site specific Forest Management Units (FMUs) – and now adopted
further such as by the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
The basic premise is that all forested areas possess biological,
environmental and social values with identifiable conservation
attributes. If these attributes are identified, then management
should ensure maintenance and/or enhancement of High Conservation
Values (HCV) described by these conservation attributes.
The
Indonesian HCVF toolkit was the first national version to be produced,
in 2003, and various arms of government are currently studying
how HCVF can fit into existing government policies and planning
processes. If this integration of HCVF into government policy
goes ahead, it will help to align government land-use decisions
with demands from international markets for ‘HCVF-free’ paper
products and sustainably-produced palm oil.
To
date, HCVF work in Indonesia has included a considerable number
of HCVF assessments at the concession level by pulp, palm oil
and timber companies, including more than a dozen in Sumatra and
a handful in Kalimantan. WWF (in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua),
The Nature Conservancy (in East Kalimantan), Tropenbos (East Kalimantan),
Flora and Fauna International (West Kalimantan) and Sumatran Orangutan
Conservation Programme (North Sumatra & Aceh) have been working
with companies and local governments to designate, manage and
monitor HCVFs within plantations and logging concessions.
Several
landscape-level HCVF assessments have also been undertaken in,
for example:
-
The Trans-fly region of southern part
of Papua Province, where the HCVF assessment identified priority
conservation areas and important indigenous social/cultural areas,
and helped WWF to influence local government to incorporate this
in its planning process;
- Riau
Province, Sumatra, where the coarse-scale HCVF assessment provided
the basis for negotiation to secure the conservation of the few
remaining large intact forest blocks such as the Tesso Nilo Forest
complex;
- West Kalimantan
Province, Kalimantan, where HCVF assessment provided the arguments
for WWF and other
NGOs to sustain remaining forest areas and protect the ‘Heart
of Borneo’.
The
HCVF landscape analysis is predominantly approached through the
generation of maps and spatial analysis. In Papua and West Kalimantan
cases, the HCVF landscape level assessments have been strengthened
by the efforts to acknowledge and incorporate social and cultural
values. This part of assessment was undertaken through a series
of consultative meetings and a workshop with social experts and
representatives of indigenous communities.
In the case of timber
plantations, WWF has been urging pulp and paper companies APP
and APRIL to protect the HCVFs in their concessions in Riau, Sumatra.
In response, APP appeared to commit to protecting the HCVF found
in one of its concessions and commissioned Smartwood to map HCVFs
in three of its other FMUs in the area. On the basis of this mapping,
APP announced that it would protect the HCVFs identified and signed
an agreement with Smartwood to track how well it is managing its
HCVFs over the next five years. However, recent monitoring reports
have shown that APP has failed to protect these areas from fires,
illegal logging and further forest conversion, despite its earlier
pledges.
For
its part, APRIL conducted its own HCVF assessments in several
of its FMUs, with support from local and international experts.
APRIL also commissioned Proforest to conduct additional HCVF assessments.
Furthermore, the company pledged it would not convert any HCVFs,
as identified through application of the Indonesian toolkit, in
any of its new concessions and would not source wood from HCVFs
anywhere in the world for any of its mills. However, in April
2006, an investigation found that natural forest in a concession
associated with APRIL was being logged, causing disturbance to
elephant habitat.
In
oil palm concessions, three of Indonesia’s major palm oil producers,
PT SMART Tbk., PT Astra Agro Lestari Tbk. and PT. London Sumatra
Tbk. have signed Memoranda of Understanding with WWF to undertake
pilot HCVF assessments with WWF in some of their concessions.
Both companies have agreed to implement the protection and management
prescriptions identified in the HCVF work, and to apply the lessons
learned in their other concessions throughout Indonesia. The companies
hope to apply the lessons-learned from this pilot to their other
concessions. However, the effectiveness of HCVF application in
this sector is yet to be seen.
The
overall HCVF application in Indonesia still raises several key
challenges, which include:
-
The first version
of Indonesia HCVF toolkit was developed by a relatively small
group of interested
practitioners and experts. Since then, much experience in
HCVF assessment has been gained and many more stakeholders
have become involved. The challenge now is to involve a wider
group of stakeholders in a process to strengthen the toolkit
based on this experience, including stronger social/cultural
analysis and lessons-learned from the oil palm experience;
-
The results of
HCVF assessment at landscape and provincial-wide levels need
to be further used to influence
government’s land use and development planning
– for instance, by being gazetted in the provincial and/or
district spatial planning;
-
The cases with
pulp and paper and oil palm companies highlight the need for
active stewardship of HCVFs if company commitments are to
make a real difference in practice.
Article
compiled and re-written by Fitrian Ardiansyah, WWF-Indonesia (fardiansyah@wwf.or.id)
based on several articles on HCVF written by WWF-International
and WWF-Indonesia
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