Jakarta, 10/9 (KOMPAS.COM): The high rate of ille­gal log­ging activ­ity in Indone­sia has caused the global mar­ket to receive Indone­sian wood prod­ucts. In respond to this prob­lem a Wood Legal­ity Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (WLVS) is estab­lished to pro­vide legal­ity for the Indone­sian wood products.

This issue was con­veyed dur­ing the Pub­lic Con­sul­ta­tion on Wood Legal­ity Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem titled: How to Guar­an­tee the Legal­ity of Indone­sian wood Prod­ucts, in San­tika Hotel, Jakarta, Wednes­day (10/9)
Tau­fiq Alimi, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Indone­sian Eco­la­bel­ing Insti­tute (LEI) said that it is dif­fi­cult for Indone­sian wood prod­ucts to enter importer coun­try mar­kets such as Japan, United States, Mex­ico and other Euro­pean coun­tries. It is often that Indone­sian wood prod­ucts are con­sid­ered as gen­er­ated from ille­gal log­ging activ­i­ties. “In order to suc­cess­fully enters the mar­ket, it is often that the Indone­sian prod­ucts are labeled as other country’s (such as Viet­nam) made,” Tau­fiq explained.

There­fore, an effi­cient, cred­i­ble and fair insti­tu­tion is required to con­vince exporter coun­tries Indone­sia is capa­ble of pro­duc­ing legal wood prod­ucts.
“It will be clear in the future that non WVLS labeled prod­ucts orig­i­nated from Indone­sia are ille­gal prod­ucts and bring no profit for busi­ness sec­tor,” he said.
He said that by imple­ment­ing the legal­ity stan­dard, it is expected that all ille­gal fees imposed to the busi­ness sec­tor can be elim­i­nated which can lead to a more effi­cient pro­duc­tion process. Aside from that, there will be con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem per­formed by civil com­mu­nity for the oper­a­tion of legal­ity verification.

In line with Taufiq’s opin­ion, the Direc­tor Gen­eral of Pro­duc­tion of the Forestry Depart­ment, Dr.Ir. Hadi S. Pasaribu, said that with the exis­tence a legal­ity insti­tu­tion, the importer coun­tries will have no doubts that all Indone­sian wood prod­ucts are legal. “Each coun­try has its own stan­dard and reg­u­la­tion and they only receive legal wood orig­i­nated from sus­tain­able man­aged for­est area,” he said.

Hadi, who is also the vice chair­man of the National Direc­tive for WLVS Insti­tu­tional Devel­op­ment, added that the WLVS is expected to reduce the rate of for­est destruc­tion due to ille­gal log­ging activ­i­ties. “We hope that we can estab­lish this insti­tu­tion by the end of the year so that it can oper­ate next year,” he said.
Mean­while, Robianto Koestomo from the Indone­sian Wood Panel Asso­ci­a­tion hopes that this insti­tu­tion will not cause more com­plex­ity to the bureau­cracy and raise of expenses so that it will not dis­rupt the busi­ness sec­tor. “In gen­eral, we appre­ci­ate this insti­tu­tion’” he said.

The idea of set­ting up the wood legal­ity stan­dard com­menced from the MoU between the Indone­sian and British gov­ern­ments on August 9, 2002 on the effort to bat­tle ille­gal log­ging. The MoU cov­ers an action plan to develop wood legal­ity stan­dard in Indone­sia. The process to set up the stan­dard through sev­eral phases and involved many par­ties such as lai LEI, Tela­pak, AMAN, Forestry Depart­ment, BRIK, and APHI.
M15-08