T

he government'€™s plan to extend the moratorium on forest clearance may prove pointless as it also plans to restart log exports, a move activists say will only make illegal logging more rampant.

Forestry Ministry secretary-general Hadi Daryanto said on Tuesday that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was considering extending the moratorium, which will expire on May 20. '€œWithout the moratorium, our forests are actually protected under the law. However, despite the existing law, we'€™ve still found illegal activities that have been damaging our protected forests. The moratorium adds another layer of forest protection,'€ he said.

Presidential Instruction No. 10/2011 on the moratorium was issued after Indonesia and Norway signed a US$1 billion deal to help Indonesia reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation.

Data from the ministry shows that from 1996 to 2003, deforestation in the country reached 3.5 million hectares per year.

Since the log export ban was enacted in 2001 and the forest clearance moratorium, which prohibits the issuance of new licenses for the conversion of primary forests and peatlands in both protected forest and productive forest, was introduced, the country saw only 450 hectares of deforestation per year.

The ministry, however, is now mulling a plan to lift the ban on log exports, saying that the development of industrial forests is sluggish due to low prices; therefore, the ministry needs to open the export market to boost it.

Logs from industrial forests are currently priced at $30 per cubic meter '€” compared to the regional price of $80 per cubic meter '€” as local production only circulates in the domestic market, reducing the price.

Environmental activists expressed their concerns over the reopening of the log export trade, as it could trigger massive deforestation and encourage illegal logging.

'€œThe ministry had actually taken a good step in supporting the extension of the moratorium. It was in line with our goal to protect the forests. However, their plan to lift the log export ban is counter-productive and will definitely affect the moratorium itself,'€ Kiki Taufik from Greenpeace Indonesia told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Kiki said that restarting log exports would open the door to illegal logging that was rampant from 1998 until 2001, when the ban on exporting logs was imposed. '€œThis will almost certainly further damage forests in Kalimantan and Papua, the main target of illegal logging, and the deforestation will be as damaging as in the late 1990s after the reformation era,'€ he said.

According to Hadi, the ministry was aware of the possibility of illegal logging, and that it would undergo long discussions before it would decide to restart log exports. He added that the ministry would only select a few seaports as export gates and closely monitor them in order to avoid illegal logging.

'€œWe can also engage in bilateral agreements on log exports. For instance, if we choose to supply the demand for logs in China we would choose a particular seaport as the export gate,'€ he said.

Greenpeace activist Yuyun Indradi said that the government'€™s scheme to restart log exports would not benefit the nation. '€œThey should add value to the logs before exporting them, to provide jobs for the people. This is definitely contrary to its [the government'€™s] declaration of pro-growth and pro-job development,'€ he said.

Hadi said that lifting the export ban would not interfere with the local labor-intensive furniture industry. '€œFor example, we might only allow [exporters] to export acacia and eucalyptus, which has high demand in the pulp and paper industry. This regulation might raise the public'€™s interest in planting eucalyptus and acacia, because the demand is high,'€ he said.

'€œAnd at the same time, it wouldn'€™t obstruct our furniture industry,'€ he said.

Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) forest campaigner Zenzi Suhadi said that Indonesia had just recovered from the trauma of deforestation caused by illegal logging, which was nowadays replaced by mining and plantation.

'€œThe international market favors logs from Malaysia because they are certified,'€ Zenzi said. '€œWhen in fact those logs have been taken illegally from our forests, mainly from Kalimantan and are processed in Malaysian factories and become legal when they export them,'€ he said.

'€œThis will restart a forest-destroying machine that has long been inactive,'€ Zenzi told the Post on Tuesday.