alll aspect

Forestry

The main aims of forestry policy are to maintain the preservation of forests for the improvement of public welfare; secure the existence of forests, optimize the benefit of forests; and reinforce forestry institutions. To achieve these aims, with reference to policy and strategy having been determined, there are five priority schemes put into operation in addressing the major issues of forestry: Illegal Logging Eradication scheme; Forest Fire Handling scheme, Forestry Restructurization scheme, Rehabilitation and Conservation scheme of Forest Resources; and scheme for Decentralization of the Forestry Sector.

ILLEGAL LOGGING ERADICATION SCHEME

The scheme aims to secure and preserve forest resources, in order that forests are managed in a sustainable fashion. Under the scheme various activities have been done, including: maintaining close cooperation with the Police and the Navy in intensifying the operation to fight illegal loggers on the spots (such as under the Waralaga Operation that enforces a law upon illegal logging including transport and trading of illegal logs, and under the Operation of Wana Bahari done by the Navy to hunt down the transportation of illegal log by sea); and to intensify surveillance operations along the northern coast of Java to prevent smuggling of illegal logs from outer Java. International cooperation has also been maintained such as with the Governments of the UK and People's Republic of China in the context of curbing down and fighting the illegal trade of logs, and of improving law enforcement, as well as intensifying activities towards the establishment of conserved forests. Similar cooperation has also been organized with the Governments of Japan, South Korea, and with the Governments of countries joining in the Forum of Forest Law Enforcement Good Governance (FLEG), etc.

FORESTRY FIRE HANDLING SCHEME

Under the scheme it has been and is being strived to prevent and minimize forest fire, and at the same time to protect people living around fires-prone forest areas. In this frame work, there have been spotted fire-susceptible areas that should be given high priority in dealing with forest fire. Those areas include North Sumatra, Riau, Jambi, Central Kalimantan, and East Kalimantan, with each area has already a Forest Fire Brigade. Early warning system is given priority to be developed in the context of preventive actions against forest fire. The early detection system on forest fires is taken from meteorology data satellite of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and from the Geo-Stationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS-5), and from HIMAWARI of Japan. Cooperation has been maintained with donor countries in handling forest fires. The zero burning scheme has been also imposed upon forest concession holding companies to prevent forest fires.

FORESTRY RESTRUCTURIZATION SCHEME

The main aims of the scheme are to preserve forest resources and to manage them in order to provide socio-economic and ecological benefits for the whole Indonesian people; and to encourage the establishment of viable wood industries and of efficient wood industrial structure that can produce products of high quality and having competitive edge in global market. Execution of the scheme also covers: the implementation of sustainable production forest management being the manifestation of sustainable forestry development concept, to manage well the supplies of wood for industrial raw material and to secure that only legal logs and timber are available in the market; the implementation of forestry sector soft landing, namely gradual reduction of timber production from natural forests as an effort to curb down the destruction of forests; and the establishment of the Forestry Industrial Revitalization Agency to improve performance of the timber processing industries, which recently tend to decline. The agency is also tasked to endeavor the preservation of forest, explore the possibilities of employment and business opportunities.

FORESTRY RESOURCES REHABILITATION AND CONSERVATION SCHEME

The scheme aims to secure and maintain the still unimpaired forests, and to accelerate the recovery of damaged forests. Through this scheme, economic and ecological values of forestry are expected to be optimum, and social conditions of the people living around the forest improve by getting direct benefits from it either as the doers or business partners.

By conserving forest resources it is hoped that the utilization of forest function and status ecologically, economically and socially can be maintained and even improved, and simultaneously animal population, types of plant, genetic germs and ecosystems existing in the conserved forests be protected and preserved.

To make the implementation of the scheme successful, various measures have been, are being and will be done to include: rehabilitation and reforestation programs of damaged forests and land of about three million hectares in five years, and 300,000 ha in 27 river basins; arrangements of national and regional-scope master plans for forest and land rehabilitation; improvement of institutions engaged in forest seed under the auspices of the Indonesian Forest Seed Project (IFST) through maintaining bilateral, multilateral as well as international cooperation, and the establishments of Forest Plant Seedling Houses (already available are in Palembang, Bandung, Denpasar, Banjarbaru, Makassar, and Ambon); promotion of active participation of society in the program of forest and land rehabilitation, through a scheme known as "seed for people"; the development of social forestry to improve the management of forest and land preservation, to empower members of society particularly those who live around forest areas to enhance their welfare.

In the implementation of the scheme of rehabilitation of damaged forest and land, the Ministry of Forestry has provided Rp134 billion to 182 district administrations.

DECENTRALIZATION SCHEME ON FORESTRY SECTOR

The scheme aims to promote the good organization of coordination of decentralization system in the field of forestry among related agencies and institutions in conforming to their respective authority and function in order to create harmony in actions to achieve better performance; and to create common understanding and perception on forestry decentralization system in implementing sustainable forest management in the context of regional autonomous system application. Regarding the decentralization system, various regulations which govern forest management, forest management planning, utilization and use of forest areas, urban forest, and reforestation fund, have been imposed.

ECOLOGY

Indonesia still has many parts of its territory covered by the luxuriant growth of the characteristic tropical rainforest vegetation, a type of ever-wet vegetation containing a large number of timber species. What makes the flora of Indonesia completely different from those of other countries as well as the flora of other tropical areas in the world is among other thing its high number of genera and species endemic.

As it is recorded, Indonesia has as many as 27,500 species of flowered plants or about 10 percent of the estimated number of flowered plant species in the whole world, and about 40,000 species of plant, or about 10-12 percent of the estimated number of plant species in the world. About 6,000 species of plants are known to be used directly by the local people. Indonesia has also some 1,539 species of reptile and amphibians (16 percent of the world's reptile). While its mammal accounts for 12 percent of the world's mammal; kinds of fish 25 percent, and kinds of bird 17 percent. Most of these species are found in forest areas which these days are suffering heavy pressures from different fronts such as animal smugglings, theft of germ plasma, timber illegal cutting, illegal hunting, illegal trade of protected species of flora and fauna etc.

Indonesia has a total forest area of about 120.25 million hectares or some 63 percent of the country's total land area. Of the area about 20.5 million ha constitute parks and reservation forests, about 33.52 million ha protection forest, 23.06 million ha limited production forest, about 35.2 million ha production forest, and about 8.07 million ha of convertible production forest.

Conservation forest area is divided into national parks (41 areas), nature recreation parks (89 areas), major forest parks (13 areas), hunting ground (15 areas), nature conservation (179 areas), and wildlife sanctuaries (51 areas).

Frequent landslide, flood, and pollution, draught, micro-seasonal changes, excessive and indiscriminative timber cuttings have to some extent degraded, depleted and damaged the forests. Unfortunately reforestation and land greening have not kept abreast yet during the past few years.

FOREST SOCIAL-ECONOMIC FUNCTION

Numerous people have enjoyed the benefits, socially and economically, forests can offer directly and indirectly. Forests provide not only its main products such as many kinds of timber, and by-products such as rattan, resin, aloe wood, sandalwood etc, but also regulate the supply of water, prevent flood, and offer employment. For instance the total number of people earning their living directly or indirectly from forests was estimated at about 30 million. In 1997 employment in forests was estimated at 183 thousand.

FOREST CONCESSION

Up to December 2002 there were 270 valid forest concessions, exploiting for about 28 million ha of forest. Of the total area, some 22.5 million ha belonging to 182 forest concession areas were managed by private companies, 339,240 ha belonging to five forest concession areas were run by state-owned enterprises, and the remaining 5.2 million ha belonging to 83 forest concession areas were administered by Joint-Venture companies between private and state owned enterprises.

In meeting the supplies of timber as raw materials for industries such as for pulp (for making paper) and other purposes, scheme of industrial timber concessions has been in operation for some years covering about 2,867,221 ha (up to the end of 2002) to produce 16,101,614 cubic meters (from 2000 to 2002).

The number of sawmill and wood working, plywood mill, pulp mill was 1,881 establishments with installed capacity of 44.77 million cubic meters far higher than the 18.60 million cubic meters raw materials can supply. In 2003 the Government imposed a regulation that determines a maximum of about 6.892 million cubic meters of timber per annum natural forests can supply. This limitation is intended to recover forests potentiality and to achieve balance between supply and demand of timber logs as raw material.

The Government revenues from reforestation funds (collected from forest concession holders) and other taxes and levies during the period of 1999-2002 amounted to Rp13.5 trillion.

An encouraging trend is that the number of people visiting nature tourist objects such as nature parks and conservation areas has been increasing. In 2001, for instance, there were 741,220 persons visiting nature parks, and 3,344,096 persons touring conservation areas.