Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – Indonesia would find it impossible to impose a moratorium prohibiting companies from logging production and industrial forests, a study by Greenomics Indonesia says.
The study showed Indonesia needed at least Rp 75.2 trillion (US$7.5 billion) to compensate the potential losses from halting the logging of 110 production forest concessions (HPH) and 77 industrial forest concessions (HTI) across the archipelago.
"The potential losses from a moratorium on logging are too high. It is impossible to implement it," Greenomics executive director Elfian Effendi said on Wednesday.
Greenomics calculated the potential losses based on the price of wood to be logged from the HPH and HTI areas belonging to companies, which had secured government licenses to fell the trees until 2018.
Elfian said any forest moratorium would also have a follow-on effect because the HPHs and HTIs employ thousands of workers.
The 187 HPH and HTI companies, which operate across 7.58 million hectares of forest, plan to log 1.48 million hectares of forests up until 2018, providing an expected output of 79.69 million cubic meters of wood.
Indonesia has 120 million of hectares of forests, making it the world's third-most forested nation, and has long been under pressure from activists and the international community because of the country's poor forest management, which has led to high levels of deforestation and land degradation.
With the severe impact of climate change looming, calls for forest nations to impose moratoriums to preserve their forests have become louder.
Data from the Forestry Ministry showed around 1.8 million hectares of rainforest was cut down in 1997, with the figures jumping to 2.8 million hectares per year between 1998 and 2000.
Since then, clearance rates have remained high, at 1.08 million hectares.
Former state environment minister Rachmat Witoelar repeatedly lobbied for temporary logging moratoriums to deal with climate change.
The Greenpeace Indonesia and the Indonesia Environmental Forum (Walhi) have also campaigned for forestry moratoriums and have asked the government to stop issuing licenses for forest conversion.
The government has allocated 64 million hectares of natural forests as the forestry concession areas that can be legally logged.
Aceh administration is the only province that has imposed a logging moratorium prohibiting the felling of forest trees. However, Aceh's poorly-enforced moratorium policy has led to an increase in illegal logging to meet high demand for timber for reconstruction following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
The NGO Riau Forest Rescue Working Network (Jikalahari) has also asked Riau administration to impose moratorium over a number of forested areas, including on the 682,511-hectare Semenanjung Kampar area.