Looting timber from Papua

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Mon, 04/17/2006 9:35 AM | Opinion

A headline in The Jakarta Post on March 23, European firms 'loot' timber from Papua, seemed to be partially informed, as a similar news item also appeared on the same day in Republika, although about a different continent. The latter carried a headline titled The United States possibly piles up illegal timber from Indonesia, as also reported by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which appeared in The Washington Post on March 22.

The timber, known as merbau, is specifically used for the floorboard or veneer business, and is known for its attractive deep red, orange and brownish color, and is only to be found in Papua, the eastern-most province of Indonesia.

The stunning point is the huge amount of money derived from these smuggled logs. Last year, before the government launched its illegal logging operation, as many as 300,000 cubic meters of merbau logs were smuggled out of Papua every month.

With no less than 3.6 million logs available in various countries, or US$600 million of flooring at retail price, it means the state is losing approximately $7.2 billion every year from this veneer business alone. Everyone in this country knows what we could do with such an amount of money, roughly twice the amount of Indonesia's debt every year to the CGI.

It could have, of course, been used for several purposes to boost the country's economic growth. The result was, in fact, the other way around. Those that reaped the profit were veneer producers in Europe, America and China. In China alone, illegal timber, including merbau, has successfully helped boost the country's economy to a staggering 9.6 percent growth as it provides jobs for 600,000 employees in the furniture sector, while their counterparts in Indonesia have been suffering from layoffs.

On the other hand, the rate of forest destruction in this country is the highest in the world, and really, really alarming. In Kalimantan, 1.3 million hectares of forest is lost a year, or 148 hectares per hour, or 2.5 hectares per minute. At this rate, only 30 percent of the country's forests will remain by 2020, according to forestry experts.

Who will then suffer from this catastrophe if not our future generations? They will indeed curse us, if such destruction continues.

M. RUSDI
Jakarta

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