T

he government has announced plans to reduce various forestry license application process times from two years to three to 15 days, raising concerns that the changes will speed up the rate of deforestation in the country, which has become the world'€™s fastest in the past decade.

The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) said on Monday that the plan posed a huge risk to the country'€™s struggling natural environment.

'€œThe risks are great because the current licensing system is already chaotic with overlapping permits. Just look at the never-ending forest fires in the country,'€ Walhi chairman Abetnego Tarigan said.

Abuse of forest permits has been blamed as one of the leading causes of annual forest fires in the country, and the government is currently trying to revoke concession permits for land or forest cleared by fire.

The government aims to simplify the application process to acquire licenses for the use of forest areas for mining, agroforestry and industrial forests. Currently, it takes from two to four years to acquire a forest conversion permit. The Environment and Forestry Ministry claims that the speeding up of the licensing process will not necessarily lead to deforestation.

'€œThe process still has to go through the planning directorate-general. They are preparing the criteria that [applicants] will need to meet the land demand for development. So I don'€™t think we will violate our own commitment [to slow down deforestation],'€ the ministry'€™s climate change director-general Nur Masripatin said on Monday.

Togu Manurung, a professor at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) and director of Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI), said that the government'€™s current way of managing the country'€™s forests was still seen as posing a huge risk to the environment.

'€œ[The simplification of the licensing process] will speed up land conversion and increase the potential for land and forest fires if it'€™s still business-as-usual for the government, as forest fires continue to occur even though the problems are crystal clear,'€ he said.

According to Togu, the government still had to prove it had better forest management credentials before it could possibly ensure that the speeding up of the licensing process would not lead to deforestation.

'€œFirst, the government has to involve the public [in the licensing process]. All data has to be transparent to all stakeholders and the public who will be affected [by the forest permit issuance] must be given the chance to voice their disagreement. For example, notify indigenous people noticed that the plan has the potential to increase land conflicts,'€ he said.

Therefore, the government has to finish implementing its one-map policy, which was officially implemented at the end of 2014 to resolve disagreements resulting from the use of different data and maps that often caused land disputes and overlapping permits in plantation and mining operations.

'€œIf the one map already exists, then it could be used as a filter to clarify [potential land conflicts],'€ said Togu. '€œIt looks like the progress on the policy stopped after the Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development [UKP4] was disbanded.'€

Nur made assurances that the government would be able to avoid land conflicts even though the mapping of customary lands made by indigenous communities had not been incorporated into the one-map policy as the ministry was currently mapping customary lands and said that there would be requirements in the licensing process to avoid overlapping permits.

Togu also suggested the government prioritize forest area that had been heavily degraded in order to reduce the number of trees that had to be cut down to convert the area.

'€œOf course it will lessen the cutting down of trees. This has to be done in order to prevent us from backtracking on our Intended National Determined Contribution [INDC], which will be presented at the Paris Climate Summit as we facilitate deforestation through the speeding up of forest licensing,'€ he said.

The stark difference in the length of days needed to process a permit has also been deemed as unrealistic as it is almost impossible to verify land ownership in remote areas like those in Papua.

'€œNot to mention when it turns out that there'€™s a tenurial problem and indigenous rights that have to be protected in the verification results,'€ Papua State University environmental study center head Charlie D. Heatubun said.