Deforestation in Indonesia: Looking Outside The Forest Industry

World Growth, along with FAO and CIFOR, has repeatedly underlined that it is forces outside of the forestry sector that are the big contributors to deforestation. Despite this, environmental campaigners are still doing their best to kick the forest industry at any moment, and governments – particularly Western ones – are more than happy to listen to them.

Thankfully the Indonesian Government is beginning to realise deforestation has many additional immediate causes outside the forest industry – and even the plantation sector. The Jakarta Post is reporting that the Forest Ministry is cracking down on illegal mining. They report that the Ministry is currently broadening a Presidential Instruction issued in 2005 on illegal logging to include plantations and mining.

Of course, this looks good on paper. The Decree looked good on paper in 2005 too. The original decree actually called on Provincial leaders to revoke licenses that contravened a forest law made in 2002 – which had to be introduced in order to undo the tenure problems created by the Reformasi period.

So, has the 2005 Decree helped? Yes and no. The problem with the Presidential Instruction is that it legally sits below anything in the legislature, meaning problems still remain – and the problems are mainly to do with land tenure. Land conflicts constitute the majority of cases heard by the Jakarta Administrative Court. According to anecdotal evidence the area of land that has been allocated by property titling in Java is seven times its actual land mass.

We’ve maintained that Indonesia’s forest problems are a symptom of tenure problems. Anyone wanting to solve the forest problems should probably look at tenure first. But that’s right, it’s complex. It’s probably much easier to go around and smear the reputations of Indonesia’s forest and agricultural industries.