The drilled-well in Sumberejo Village, Batuwarno Subdistrict, Wonogiri was made in 2000. The spring that was founded by the local villagers can produce up to hundreds meter cubic of water per second.

Thanks to the spring, no less than 680 families in the village and surrounding areas can now enjoy a year-long access to sufficient amount of clean water. They no longer need to walk kilometers away to fetch water.

What more surprising is the fact that there are still more than 22 unexplored and unexploited springs in the village and another 16 in Selopuro Village.

All emerge after the community members of the two villages transform their land into community forests.

“Before the community forests grown here, the land was arid and barren. Water spring was located far from the villages. However, due to the reforestation, water now seems to spring everywhere,” said Katmo, a villager from Selopuro.

Communal Work
Persepsi’s Vice Director, Taryanto Wijaya – who has been assisting to the people in Selopuro and Sumberejo in their endeavor to conserve the environment, said that it was the community who found the spring.

Together they pushed aside rocks, drilled a well and installed a 6x450 watts water pump.

“A team with a task to manage the well and evenly distributed the water to the villagers has also been established here,” said Taryanto.

Meanwhile, in Selopuro – according to a local tree-planting pioneer, Misman – people built a dam to store water produced by the spring. Villagers can then make use of the water for their daily needs and to irrigate their field. Also according to Misman, he and other villagers need to transport 1.168 trucks of stone to build the dam.

Other positive impacts of the community forests – apart from the newly emerged water springs – are new work opportunities. So far, the community has processed twigs of teak, mahogany, and other hardwood trees into handicrafts. Thus, they can benefit from the forests without logging them.

For many, twigs are useless waste or, at the utmost, used only as firewood. However, for Siman, they can be collected and processed into various artistic furniture.

Twigs are usually made into sofas, cabinets or a set of table and chairs. The 5-cm in diameter twigs are arranged, assembled, and formed into furniture. Some decorated with glass.

“We are currently finishing the order from PT Jawafurni Lestari in Yogyakarta. Our business enterprise is run by 6–8 employees,” said Siman.

PT Jawafurni Lestari is a company that specializes in exporting furniture made from certified wood. Siman is yet to widely market his products to other companies. – By: Suharsih

LEI’s CoC –certified forest product industries is also increasing in number from 2 to 6 industries. They are PT. Uniseraya (a garden furniture and molding manufacturer), PT. Jawa Furni Lestari (an outdoor and indoor furniture producer), and four pulp and paper mills utilizing PHTL LEI-certified raw material supplied by PT. Wira Karya Sakti. The four pulp and paper mills are subsidiaries of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), i.e. PT. Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper Tbk., PT. Lontar Papyrus Pulp & Paper Industry, PT. Pindo Deli Pulp and Paper Kerawang and Perawang Mills, and PT. Pabrik Kertas Tjiwi Kimia Tbk. The mills passed the CoC certification performed by PT. TUV Internasional Indonesia (TUV Rheinland Group) in August 2009.

The increasing number of industries receiving LEI’s CoC certificate will raise the number LEI-certified products in the market. This will lead to a wider acknowledgement of LEI logo in the market.
In the efforts to enhance its competitiveness and bargaining position to cope with market the demands environmental issues, LEI develops work programs to increase the distribution of LEI-certified products in domestic and international markets, increase the total forest area certified, perform continuous improvements for its certification system to improve the system’s quality and effectivity and develop new certification systems.
“The launch of LEI-certified paper products shows to the world that Indonesia is able to comply with the requirements needed to process forest products extracted from units that implement sustainable forest management principle. With the introduction of COC-LEI certified paper to Japan market we hope that Indonesian paper and paper products can gain trust from the Japanese market which will lead to a wider Japanese consumers’ trust .”
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E-COC system aims at developing tree database electonically. The computer will trace each of the log back to its origin and owner. The timber buyers can also access the database. Buyers will receive the ID of the product to login into web database.

KWML and Jawa Furni Lestari have collaborativelly provide the training. In the future, KWML will implement the tree database set up. The Forest Farmers associations and groups have expressed their positive responses to this progress. (exwan novianto)