Marianne Kearney, Indonesia – In A bid to halt rampant illegal logging, Indonesia's Forestry Minister has announced a proposal to put a ban on all log exports from Indonesia until it can guarantee a sustainable logging industry.
The proposal comes amid increasing pressure from Indonesia's international donors to curb illegal logging which has decimated national parks from Kalimantan to Sumatra to West Papua. If allowed to continue, Sumatra and Kalimantan's prime forests will be destroyed by 2010, according to a recent World Bank study.
But in order to curb illegal logging, log exports will have to be stopped completely, because, "we are not able to monitor who exports legal logs or illegal logs," said Minister Nurmahmudi Ismail.
The proposal of the ban by Mr Nurmahmudi is an open challenge to Asia, in particular Malaysia whose pulp and paper industry relies on buying illegal logs from Indonesia.
He charged that the illegal timber industry was supported by international companies exporting to Malaysia, Singapore and Japan. "Ask the international community how they will respond, whether they are responsible in the illegal logging practices or not? If they are serious in supporting us, they have to accept it." He said he hoped such a ban would reveal who is conducting the large-scale illegal trade of timber between Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr Luhut Panjaitan, has confirmed that Indonesia's economic team would decide by next week whether to impose the ban which would mean a loss of around US$1 billion a year from legal timber exports.
Enforcing the ban, however, could damage Malaysia's million-dollar pulp and paper industry, said commodities analysts and forestry officials who charge that Malaysia's pulp industry relies on buying illegal logs.
Indonesia's pulp and paper industry could also be affected as it also consumes vast amounts of illegally logged timber as well as timber cut from natural forests, said forestry experts.
Analysts are unsure exactly how much timber is smuggled between the Kalimantan-Sarawak border or from Sumatra but they estimate the trade to be worth as much as US$600 million per year.
Environmentalists doubt the ban will lessen the brisk timber trade across the Kalimantan-Sarawak border as smuggling was rampant even during the 1980s when a log export ban was in place.
"People will still be motivated to export because the price in the international market is higher than here, so there is still a lot of incentive to smuggle," said Mr Togu Manurung, a forest economist from the Natural Resources Management Programme.
"The problem of illegal logging is the problem of KKN and non-enforcement," he added, referring to the Indonesian acronym for corruption, collusion and nepotism.
Commodities experts said the ban may be more of a boost to the Indonesian pulp and paper industries rather than a solution to the problem of illegal logging. They said local pulp and paper industries will stand to benefit as timber prices drop.
Banning log exports also means there will be a generous supply of cheaper logs for the local pulp and paper mills. Mr Nurmahmudi has admitted that much of illegal logging was aided by corrupt forestry ministry officials as well as corrupt police and soldiers.