The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has identified companies in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra as having caused damage to forests and river watersheds covering as much as 889,125 hectares.
This has been worsened by illegal activity, therefore Walhi is urging the Ministry of Forestry to immediately revoke all business permits in the forestry sector in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra.
In addition to this, the Ministry of Forestry must take firm law enforcement action against illegal mining and palm oil plantation activities in the three provinces. This disaster, which resulted in huge losses, must be used as momentum to make corrections to all forestry and environmental sector policies in Indonesia.
WALHI Campaign Division head Uli Artha Siagian, said that the permit evaluation process which would leads to the revoking of permits must be carried out transparently. The process must ensure environmental protection from the aspects of disasters and the restoration of people's rights.
In accordance with his authority under Article 72 of the Forestry Law, the Minister of Forestry can use the authority attached to him to represent the interests of the community and force forest destroying companies to take responsibility, including paying for losses experienced by the community, as well as restoring forests which are the source of life for communities.
Walhi noted that there were at least 13 forestry, mining and plantation companies that had committed acts of forest destruction which resulted in a significant reduction in environmental capacity.
Apart from that, Walhi also noted that there were 62 gold mining activities without permits in West Sumatra (Solok and Sijunjung regencies) and 5,208 hectares of forest area was converted into oil palm plantations by 14 companies in Aceh province. Moreover in seven regencies in Aceh (West Aceh, Nagan Raya, Pidie, Aceh Jaya, Central Aceh, South Aceh and Aceh Besar) 954 watersheds areas were damaged and 60 percent of these were in forest areas.
"Illegal activities in forest areas and river basins in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra have actually been going on for dozens of years, if not more. It is unfortunate why the Ministry of Forestry and the police have not enforced the law firmly. If these illegal acts had been dealt with and stopped beforehand, it would not have had such a big impact as is happening now", added Siagian
In order that similar incidents do not occur in other regions of Indonesia, Walhi is asking the Ministry of Forestry to openly and in a participatory manner form a Task Force (Satgas) for the Evaluation of Illegal Permits and Activities in Forest Areas.
This task force must involve civil society organisations so that the evaluation and law enforcement process can target both licensed and illegal activities in forest areas effectively and transparently. This mechanism must lead to environmental restoration and the fulfilling of community rights, not perpetuating illegal practices as happened with the Forest Area Enforcement Task Force (Satgas PKH) which was proven to allow illegal oil palm plantations to continue operating in forest areas.
Therefore, Walhi is emphasising that without firm action from the Ministry of Forestry to immediately enforce administrative, criminal and civil laws, society and the environment will continue to suffer negative impacts. Failure to act will only cause a repeat of the disasters that occurred in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra, as well as open opportunities for them to occur again in other regions of Indonesia.
Contact person: Uli Artha Siagian +628115501980
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "WALHI Desak Kementerian Kehutanan Tindak Aktivitas Ilegal dan Cabut Perizinan Berusaha Perusahaan Penyebab Banjir Sumatera".]