(Bis­nis Indone­sia, March 12 2007)- JAKARTA: Amid the community’s neg­a­tive per­spec­tives on Indone­sian for­est Indus­try, six com­pa­nies (man­age­ment unit) received Sus­tain­able For­est Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate from the Indone­sian Eco­la­bel­ing Insti­tute (LEI).

In addi­tion to the six com­pa­nies, there are other five com­mu­nity for­est man­age­ments and one wood indus­try. All of the 11 insti­tu­tions has com­plied with LEI’s stan­dard in set­ting up and develop for­est man­age­ment sys­tem. The for­est man­age­ments main­tain an area of 1.04 mil­lion ha cer­ti­fied for­est or approx­i­mately 1.5% of the total 103 mil­lions ha Indone­sian for­est areas.

“The total cer­ti­fied for­est area is very small in size,” said Indra Setia Dewi the head of LEI’s Pub­lic Rela­tion Divi­sion in Jakarta yesterday.

She said that the con­di­tion occurred due to the unfa­vor­able for­est man­age­ment pre­con­di­tion in sup­port­ing the achieve­ment of sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment per­for­mance. This can be seen in the over­lap­ping pol­icy occurred between sec­tors, depart­ments and between cen­tral and regional.

Indra added that the government’s lack of deter­mi­na­tion in imple­ment­ing the pol­icy is the main prob­lem of which caus­ing an increas­ing con­flicts and tenur­ial con­flict in pro­duc­tion for­est con­ces­sion areas.
The unfa­vor­able con­di­tion, accord­ing to Indra, has caused dif­fi­culty for the man­age­ment units to achieve the sus­tain­able for­est performance.

The Forestry Min­is­ter, M.S Kaban also admit that more than 59 mil­lion hectares out of the total 120.35 mil­lion hectares of Indone­sian for­est area is in a very bad con­di­tion and imme­di­ately requir­ing reha­bil­i­ta­tion.
The con­di­tion is manly due to the high for­est destruc­tion rate of which reaches the size of 2.83 mil­lion hectares per year.

“The source of the prob­lem id the ille­gal log­ging and ille­gal trad­ing activ­i­ties per­formed by com­mu­nity mem­bers,” said Kaban recently.

Com­mu­nity Con­flicts
For the mat­ter, said Indra, in order to cre­ate a con­ducive envi­ron­ment enabling the com­pa­nies to achieve the sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment prac­tices, espe­cially at man­age­ment unit level, LEI devel­ops the phased cer­ti­fi­ca­tion system.

The cer­tifi­cate is granted after LEI eval­u­ates the aspects of pro­duc­tion, bor­der man­age­ment, com­mu­nity con­flict res­o­lu­tion and also the envi­ron­men­tal aspects the com­pany has con­ducted to main­tain the ecosys­tem both from the up and down­stream sides.

Indra added that the assess­ment is also con­ducted to see whether the for­est man­age­ment com­pany has pro­vided both social and econ­omy ben­e­fits for com­mu­nity mem­bers live around the for­est areas. The ben­e­fits can be in the form of pro­vid­ing job oppor­tu­nity for com­mu­nity mem­bers set­ting up pub­lic and social facil­i­ties. (erwin.tambunan@bisnis.co.id/ martin.sihombing@bisnis.co.id).