Deforestation in Indonesia continues at the rate of at least 2 million hectares per year. Not only is the deforestation problem an ecological disaster, it also causes human rights violations and threats to community livelihoods. There have been no progresses made by the Indonesian government and the donor countries to solve the problem. For instance, the Interdepartmental Committee on Forestry is dead. Forestry has returned to become a sectoral, instead of a cross-sectoral, issue. Business continues as usual within the forestry sector. There have been no real, significant achievements on the GoI's 12 commitments on forestry to the CGI. On the contrary, the new government has announced that these commitments will be reduced to five priority forestry programs, without any consultation with stakeholders within Indonesia. These five forestry programs neglect other important issues previously identified by the GoI and CGI. For example moratorium on natural forest conversion; tenurial issues, closing heavily-indebted wood industries under Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) control; reform of the forest management system.

The Government (through the Ministry of Trade and Industry) has not closed any of the heavily-indebted wood industries. Instead, IBRA is helping indebted companies to restructure their debt. They have not been forced to sell other assets.

Despite its commitment to control illegal logging, no significant progresses have been made by the Indonesian government in this area. While estimates of the magnitude of illegal logging vary, virtually all forestry stakeholders in Indonesia believe that illegal logging continues to take place at a very large scale.

The large gap between demand and supply for the wood-based industries, 'naturally' are filled by illegal resources or unrecorded loggings, which are over cutting, cutting outside authorized area, cutting in stiff slope or in protected areas and unauthorized cutting, done by logging concessions, organized crimes and small scale timber harvesting classified as "thieves". Military and police involvement in forest exploitation is obvious but there has been no serious measures to tackle this problem.

This means that more than half of the industry's raw materials come from illegal woods. Most concession holders themselves, and companies with formally "legal"concessions, are usually directly involved in illegal operations, and the illegal logs are easily laundered by easy access to "official papers". And the main wood consuming industries – such as plywood, paper and pulp - are dependent on the illegal and unsustainable forest management operations.

One of the most important issues to be resolved in Indonesian forestry is the tenurial rights of the many millions of people living in and around forests. Indonesian legislation is contradictory and does not recognize forest peoples' rights.

The premature implementation of regional autonomy does not require local governments to provide the financial, institutional and human resources to deal with forest management.

The root causes of these problems are corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN); the lack of law enforcement and the lack of recognition of community rights and natural resources management systems.

There have already been more than enough workshops and meetings with lots of recommendations, but no concrete action.

We, the undersigned, therefore call for:

1. A moratorium on large scale commercial logging in natural forests until there is genuine forest reform
   
2. The formulation of a cross-sectoral mechanism, directly under the President's control, to address the crisis in Indonesian forestry. This should be supported by holistic reform, including legal and institutional reform, on land and natural resources tenure and management.
   
3. Prove that the government is serious about eliminating corruption, collusion and nepotism from Indonesian forestry. There should be serious actions to enforce law against forest crimes.
   
4. Heavily-indebted wood-based companies must repay their debt in full. Companies that cannot demonstrate sustainable supply should not be recapitalized or restructured; they should be allowed to collapse.
   
5. Stop the involvement of the military and police forces in forest exploitation and impose sanction on parties/individuals who do not fulfill their responsibilities to forest protection.
   
6. Greater accountability, transparency and responsibility by local and central government in the management of natural resources.

Jakarta, 7 November 2001
Signed,

Association for Community and Ecological-Based Legal Reform (HuMa)
Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA)
Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI)
Indigenous People Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN)
Indonesia Ecolabelling Institute (LEI)
Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL)
Indonesian Forum for International Development (INFID)
Indonesian NGO Forum for Environment (WALHI)
Supporting Consortioum for Community Based Forestry System (KPSHK)
Telapak Indonesia
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia
Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation (Yayasan Kehati)