Jakarta, Indonesia, February 23, 2006--When the world's biggest timber smuggling operation from Papua to China was exposed last year, it marked a turning point in the fight against illegal logging in the country, according to the Jakarta Post.
Released in February by the London-based Environmental Investigative Agency (EIA) and its local partner Telapak, the report--which openly accused high-ranking Indonesian Military (TNI) officers of being in cahoots with other government officials and law enforcers in running the racket--worked like magic.
Wasting no time, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rounded up his subordinates and ordered a huge crackdown led by the National Police and supported by the Indonesian Military against the smuggling operation--estimated to be worth around one billion dollars a year in merbau logs from Papua to China amid a log export ban in place since 2001.
Just within three months after the report was launched, Telapak recorded that the Rp 12 billion (US $1.2 million) crackdown had netted 173 suspects and seized over 385,000 cubic meters of logs.
The police also reported in May that they had submitted case files on at least 25 suspects, including three middle-ranking Papua police officers, to prosecutors, while case files on the remaining 151 suspects were still being completed.
The crackdown has also affected the market for merbau timber, a hardwood used mainly for flooring, with shortages and price rises reported in both Indonesia and China.
But the crackdown failed to impress long enough, nor failed to stop the country's rapid deforestation rate, claimed to be the world's worst with an area the size of Switzerland being lost every year.
Telapak's forest campaigner, Muhammad Yayat Afianto, said the crackdown had an immediate affect on reducing illegal logging but lamented the significant fact that the major criminal networks were not broken although the government has been informed of the officials involved in the racket.
Come December, the magic had completely worn off.
Around the country, illegal logging continues as before--even reaching deep into protected forested areas like national parks.
From 144 million hectares of tropical forests that the country had in 1991, it has shrunk to 110 million hectares in 2003 as deforestation caused by illegal logging, forest fires, forest conversion is unstoppable at a rate which is estimated at more than 2.8 million hectares per year.
Weak law enforcement, political will and conflicting policies--which look good on paper, but because capacity and resources are lacking, cannot be enforced--have meant that deforestation is still on the rise in many parts of the country, like Kalimantan, Sumatra and Sulawesi.
In Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, millions of hectares of forest are currently at risk if the government proceeds with a plan to open the world's largest palm oil plantation on the island.
The plan--which is expected to cover an area of 1.8 million hectares along the 850 kilometer Indonesia-Malaysia border in the northern areas of West Kalimantan and East Kalimantan provinces--is feared might harm not only the forest but also the rich forest biodiversity in Kalimantan, which has a vast area of tropical rain forest and is home to several near-extinct species, like orangutans.
All these years, according to the World Wife Fund for Nature, Kalimantan, which has 27 million hectares of forests, has suffered from rapid deforestation at the rate of 1.2 million hectares per year. The World Bank even predicts that by 2010, all of Kalimantan's lowland forests will disappear if nothing is done to curb deforestation.
Timber smuggling operations are also hard to miss in Lampung where illegal logs are being shipped out of the Way Kambas and Bukit Barisan Selatan national parks to illegal sawmills in broad daylight.
