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Malaysia tackles illegal
logging
By Mustafa Ali
KUALA
LUMPUR - Malaysia is implementing a ban on the
importation of timber from Indonesia, but this remains
some way off from dismantling the entire system that
allow Indonesian timber to reach this country illegally.
Malaysia announced this ban last month to
address widespread criticism that its timber industry
has been part of the illegal system allowing logs and
sawn timber to get here from Indonesia - and adding to
the destruction of forest cover in its neighboring
country.
Starting this month, the Malaysian
government said, it will issue import licenses only to
those importers who can show proof that the origin of
incoming logs is not Indonesia.
But the larger
question is whether political will and well-intentioned
administrative measures can bring to a halt a powerful
network that trades in illegal timber between Indonesia
and Malaysia - and makes huge profits from it.
Environmental groups estimate that over the past
10 years, timber smuggling from Indonesia's Kalimantan
alone into Malaysia has cost the Indonesian government a
nominal minimum of US$580 million in value, a reckoning
that relies on the market rate - whether illegal or not
- that such produce would fetch.
"At least 50
percent of the revenue goes to illegal loggers, while 30
percent goes to private companies," said Bintang
Simangunsong, senior lecturer at the Bogor Institute of
Agriculture (IPB).
The typical operation
comprises local Indonesians who are the cheap labor for
the venture, the middlemen - usually a group of 10-15
who supply equipment and food to the small logging teams
- the timber barons who wield political and economic
clout and often own timber processing factories, and
finally the relevant local and regional authorities in
Indonesia who ensure that the business runs.
What
has agitated Kuala Lumpur recently, however, is the
Malaysian part of the syndicates, which launder the
illegal timber from Indonesia and turn it into produce
of Malaysian origin.
Indeed, during a
parliamentary commission meeting in February, Indonesian
Forestry Minister Muhammad Prakosa said he suspected
Malaysian citizens of being involved in illegal logging
in Indonesia.
He recalled, for instance, a trip
he once made to Kalimantan, the Indonesian province that
borders the Malaysian state of Sarawak. "We saw
heavy-duty equipment and we suspected that the equipment
belonged to Malaysian citizens that have committed
illegal logging," he said, adding that nine Malaysians
had been arrested in Papua on suspicion of illegal
logging.
It is to counter the suspicions, and to
conduct damage control, that Malaysian Primary
Industries Minister Lim Keng Yaik announced the
imposition of the ban by Malaysia on imports of sawn
timber from Indonesia. "We are taking this drastic
action in the interest of Malaysia and to remove the
negative perception against our timber industry," he was
quoted as saying by the Bernama news agency. The ban
covers Indonesian squared logs more than 390 square
centimeters in size.
Whether the ban will make a
real difference remains unclear for now.
In an
interview, a spokeswoman for the Malaysian Nature
Society, Stella Melkion, said, "If the quantity [of the
imported sawn timber] is significant, the banning is
worth it. But if the quantity is low, it doesn't make
much different because there are always other markets
that are open for it."
An indication of the
volumes involved can be gauged from Indonesian
government figures. The economic losses said to have
been incurred from illegally cut logs are pegged at an
annual Rp30 trillion ($3.4 billion) and an outflow of
50.7 million cubic meters of timber.
But those
are purely economic measures - and factor in none of the
socio-ecological impact of continued illegal logging.
Indonesia's forests are among the most diverse
and biologically rich in the world. Although the country
occupies only 1.3 percent of the Earth's land surface,
it holds a disproportionately high share of its
biodiversity. This includes 11 percent of the world's
plant species, 10 percent of its mammal species, and 16
percent of its bird species.
It was the illicit
networks raping those forests, however, that were the
focus of an investigation by Indonesian environmental
non-government group Telapak and the London-based
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). It found that
the key points of illegal Indonesian-Malaysian timber
trade are West Kalimantan's provincial capital Pontianak
and Sarawak's capital Kuching.
They reported
that timber was transported from Central Kalimantan to
Malaysia. Once there, said the groups, blocks are
exported to the world market.
More damning is
the finding by the ETA and Telapak that timber was
processed in sawmills established by Malaysian
businessmen inside Indonesia. Their estimate is that
more than a million cubic meters of timber passes
through that every year, and that 50 percent of the
timber supply to the hundreds of sawmills in Sarawak is
illegal material from Kalimantan.
On other
routes, data from Indonesia's Forestry Ministry in 2001
showed that between 80,000 and 100,000 cubic meters of
illegal timber were moved every month through the port
of Tarakan in East Kalimantan to the Malaysian province
of Sabah.
That has helped explain how the
timber-processing industry in Sabah has a capacity of up
to 15 million cubic meters annually, although it has
access to a legal supply of just 4 million cubic meters.
Critics say that it is a widespread,
well-connected and well-entrenched regional network,
aided to a large extent by Indonesia's creaky legal
system and the corruption, that plagues it.
In
fact, in its March campaign against illegal logging,
Forest Watch Indonesia director Togu Manurung expressed
his disappointment at the Indonesian government's
failure to tackle the problem. "The campaign [against
illegal logging] must emerge as a social movement
because we cannot rely on the government to take legal
action against illegal loggers," he said.
There
has also been international pressure, not least from
Indonesia's donor governments and institutions that
since 2001 have been calling for a halt to illegal
logging.
(Inter Press Service)
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