http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2223596.stm
Friday, 30 August,
2002, 14:43 GMT 15:43 UK
Clock ticking for Indonesian rainforest
By Richard Galpin
BBC correspondent in Jakarta
QUOTE #1:
"Every day up to 350 lorries have been travelling along this
road.
I believe 100 of them contain illegal logs from Tesso Nilo."
- WWF official
QUOTE #2:
"I will not ask my people to stop the logging.
I will tell them to carry on, as long as these
companies are getting our wood, then
why should we stop?"
- Village chief Mohammed Hatta
CAPTION
#1:
"Vast tracts of the forest have been destroyed"
CAPTION
#2:
"A constant stream of trucks take the trees for pulping"
CAPTION
#3:
"The loggers are driven by poverty"
The Indonesian island of Sumatra is the sixth largest island
in the world and once boasted some of the most extensive and
richest areas of tropical rainforest anywhere on the planet
- but no longer.
It is estimated 60%
of the total forest cover has been destroyed
over the past 100 years, with the rate of destruction increasing
rapidly in the 1970s and 80s under the authoritarian regime of
former President Suharto.
His government was
particularly keen on dividing up vast areas
of the country's forests into concessions given to powerful
businessmen to log and convert into rubber and palm-oil
plantations.
This along with the
resettlement of millions of people
from over-crowded Java to islands such as Sumatra and
Borneo, all of whom needed land to farm, saw deforestation
reach unprecedented levels.
Today it is estimated
around two million hectares (five million
acres) of Indonesian forest are lost every year - an area
equivalent to the size of Belgium.
And the majority of
the logging is believed to be illegal.
Race against
time
In Sumatra environmentalists
are now fighting a desperate
battle to save the last substantial part of the lowland
forest still standing.
The forest in Riau
province is called Tesso Nilo and
organisations such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF)
believe it is critical it is turned into a special
conservation area.
"This lowland
forest is the prime habitat of the Sumatran
tiger, elephants and other important species," said Nazir
Foead of WWF Indonesia.
"If Tesso Nilo
forest goes, then the chances of survival
for these endangered species will be very, very slim."
Unparalleled
diversity
On top of this, recent
research commissioned by WWF discovered
that Tesso Nilo has the highest level of biodiversity on earth.
Scientists found more
than 200 vascular plant species in just
200 square metres of forest - far more even than in the Amazon.
But time is fast running
out for the world's richest forest
which presently occupies an area of just 1,500 square kilometres
(579 square miles).
If the current rate
of logging continues, it will have disappeared
within the next four years.
Driving into the area
it is easy to see why. A major road
has been built through the forest making it easy to access
the timber.
Every few minutes lorries
laden with logs groan along the
road belching diesel fumes into the atmosphere.
"Every day up
to 350 lorries have been travelling along
this road," said one WWF official who has been monitoring
the logging here.
"I believe 100
of them contain illegal logs from Tesso Nilo."
Easy money
We drove further into
the forest and soon could hear
the sound of chainsaws in the distance.
The illegal loggers
are a mixture of local villagers and
gangs of people who have come from further afield, generally
from other provinces in Sumatra.
What they have in common
is poverty. The case of Kamarudin,
a local villager, is typical. We followed him as he slashed
his way deep into the forest, with his chainsaw balanced on
his shoulder.
It did not take him
long to find what he wanted - a large
tropical hardwood tree called Meranti. The tree, which took
decades to grow, came crashing to the ground within a couple
of minutes.
"Chopping down
trees like this hardwood Meranti, I can earn
$60 a week," he said. "Much more than the rubber plantation
where I used to work where the money wasn't enough to feed
my family."
Local anger
We went back to Kamarudin's
village in the middle of the
forest - a desperately poor area.
More and more villagers
have been turning to illegal logging
over the last five years since the Asian economic crisis hit
Indonesia.
According to the village
head, Mohammed Hatta, it will not
be long before more than half the families here are involved
in chopping down wood.
Mr Hatta is actively
encouraging this because he believes
his people have the right to do so, as he says the land is
theirs.
Such a direct challenge
to the authorities would have been
unthinkable under the repressive regime of former President
Suharto. But since the advent of democracy in 1998 local
communities have been asserting themselves much more.
Mr Hatta is angry that
over the years the government
has given the rights to the whole of Tesso Nilo forest
to several logging and plantation companies.
"I will not ask
my people to stop the logging," he said,
"I will tell them to carry on, as long as these companies
are getting our wood, then why should we stop?"
Massive operation
The scale of the main
forestry industries in the area is
breath-taking. We visited the Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper
company (RAPP) on the outskirts of the forest, one of two
such businesses based in the province.
It is a huge, hi-tech
industrial complex housing the world's
largest pulp mill. It produces almost two million tons of pulp
every year, consuming eight million tons of wood in the process.
It is a non-stop operation.
The mill operates 24-hours a day,
with a never-ending convoy of trucks arriving at the factory
to supply the wood.
Back in 1993 the government
gave RAAP a concession of around
3,000 sq km which it could log and then re-plant with acacia
trees.
Part of this concession
lies within the Tesso Nilo forest itself.
No guarantees
A spokesman for the
company told the BBC the forest it was
given to convert to acacia plantations was already degraded
- in other words had already been substantially logged.
But WWF says this is
wrong, "RAPP is chopping down primary
rain-forest," said Mr Foead.
The company is trying
to promote itself as environment-friendly
because it says within six years it will have planted enough
acacia trees to provide a sustainable source of wood for the
pulp mill.
Ironically it can only
do this by first destroying swathes
of Sumatran rain-forest.
Environmentalists also
believe illegal logs from Tesso Nilo
are being sold to RAPP. The capacity of the mill is so huge
that around one-fifth of the wood supply is provided by
outside contractors.
The company says there
are stringent checks on the sources
of logs provided by these contractors, but admits it cannot
guarantee all the wood is legal.
WWF remains optimistic
it can save Tesso Nilo from the
loggers by persuading the government to turn it into a
national park. But it will be an uphill struggle.
Indonesia's Forestry
Minister Mohammad Prakosa told the BBC
he could not simply revoke the licences given to the companies
which had been given the right to log the area.
And even if Tesso Nilo
did become a national park, it would
still not be safe from the illegal loggers.
The experience in Indonesia's
other national parks has been
that illegal logging has continued unabated as law enforcement
across the country is so weak, not least because the police
and other officials are notoriously corrupt.
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