(Yogya, May 15 2008)-KR) – The dis­tri­b­u­tion of ille­gal woods in Indone­sia is at alarm­ing level, there­fore a Wood Legal­ity Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (WLVS) is very much required to facil­i­tate the var­i­ous inter­ests in the cred­i­ble, effi­cient and fair national wood man­age­ment. With regards to wood man­age­ment issues, there is still a wide “grey area” capa­ble of caus­ing vul­ner­a­bil­ity and digres­sion at the moment. A clear pol­icy on wood legal­ity issue is expected to reg­u­late all par­ties involved in this sec­tor in a pro­por­tional way and to save the national wood resource.

Tau­fiq Alimi, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of LEI, con­veyed the above facts in respond­ing to KR’s ques­tions dur­ing the Sem­i­nar and Pub­lic Con­sul­ta­tion titled “Wood Legal­ity Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Insti­tu­tion: How to Guar­an­tee the Legal­ity of Indone­sian Wood prod­ucts”, held at Jayakarta Hotel Yogyakarta, Wednes­day (14/5). “Everyone’s inter­est is accom­mo­dated. For the busi­ness sec­tor, there will be no prob­lem as long as there is cer­tainty on which prod­ucts are legal and which are not. It is very dif­fi­cult for this sec­tor to develop if no clear reg­u­la­tion exists,” said Tau­fiq Alimi.

“What we have at the moment is “grey area” as I men­tioned. Due to this uncer­tainty vul­ner­a­bil­ity occurs, and busi­ness sec­tor would pre­fer to (ille­gally) pay for any­thing as long as they can run their busi­ness. If we let this grey area to grow wider, it will cause big­ger prob­lem for every­one. It is going to cre­ate dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion both for the busi­ness sec­tor and law enforcer., even NOG will find it dif­fi­cult to con­trol forst uti­liza­tion,’ he added.

How­ever Tau­fiq is grate­ful that all par­ties includ­ing the var­i­ous level of gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion and busi­ness sec­tors are deter­mined to elim­i­nate the exist­ing grey area in order to cre­ate cer­tainty. If there is cer­tainty, all par­ties will be able to man­age their job in a more pro­por­tional way and things will be a lot eas­ier. The busi­ness sec­tor will have clar­ity in man­ag­ing their busi­ness, and at the same time the law enforcer will also have cer­tainty in per­form­ing their job. The law enforcer will have a clear law in deal with ille­gal busi­ness with­out hav­ing hes­i­ta­tion that the case will be dis­missed at court level due to the lack of evi­dence, etc.
The head of Yoagyakarta Forestry and Plan­ta­tion Office, Ir Ahmad Dawam, explained that the total state for­est area in DIY province is 18.821,92 ha, with a poten­tial com­mu­nity for­est area of 104.630–125.000 planted with teak wood, mahogany aca­cia and mixed vegetation.

With regards to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, at the moment there are three com­mu­nity for­est areas that have been cer­ti­fied as sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment in the areas of Pang­gang, Playen and Ngi­la­par, Gunung Kidul. “The most dis­trib­uted woods are woods of 30cm diam­e­ter. This is not prof­itable. Dur­ing the year 2006 to 2007 there has been decline in the wood dis­tri­b­u­tion in DIY province. The saw mill indus­try has been reduced in num­ber leav­ing only 69 units at the moment”, said Dawam. (San)-c