Indonesia

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.

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.

Open letter to the European Parliament, the European Commission, the governments and citizens of the European Union Sawit Watch. Bogor, 26 January 2007

Indonesia is one of the world’s most populous and rural countries, with a total population of 220 million people.

Later this year, United Fiber Systems plans to open a new 700,000 tonnes a year wood chip mill at Alle-Alle on the island of Pulau Laut. The mill is the first step of UFS’ proposed pulp developments for Kalimantan. The wood chips will be exported to feed pulp and paper mills in China.

Wherever industrial tree plantations are planted in the South, governments provide a range of subsidies to investors. In Indonesia, the government has handed out billions of dollars for plantation development. The plantation and pulp sectors have also received generous aid support. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank funded studies in the 1980s. A range of export credit agencies helped finance the construction of pulp mills.

By Rivani Noor and Rully Syumanda

Extensive cultivation of oil palm and the resulting oil extraction have always been linked to repression. Plantation cultivation was originally established by colonial regimes. The rapid expansion of plantations in Asia following the Second World War was encouraged in connection with forest clearing and was used as a weapon in combating Malay rebels.

On April 12, 2006, the report “The Kalimantan Border Oil Palm Mega-project” was released to show the plans of the Indonesian government to develop up to 3 million hectares of oil palm plantations on the island of Borneo, of which 2 million hectares along the Kalimantan-Malaysia border and 1 million hectares elsewhere --in areas still heavily forested and inhabited by indigenous communities--, to cater for international demand for cheap palm oil to meet the domestic and global demand for bio-fuel.

In the last decade, financial institutions and investment banks have handed out more than US$40 billion for new pulp projects in the South. Analysts expect another US$54 billion to be invested in pulp mills in the South by 2015 much of it in Brazil, Uruguay, China, the Mekong Region and the Baltic States.

In 2004, the Minister of Forestry, through Decree No. 101/Menhut-II/2004, issued a policy on accelerating pulpwood development to supply the pulp and paper industry. The policy received broad acceptance in the province of Jambi by PT Wira Karya Sakti (PT WKS), a forestry company subsdiary of the giant Sinar Mas Group (SMG).

Another new FSC certificate of a major logging operation, this time in Indonesia, has got forest watchers scratching their heads.