Opening Statement by Mr. Koes Saparjadi
Director General for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation,
Ministry of Forestry of the Republic of Indonesia
His Excellency Yoshiki Mine, Ambassador for Global Environment, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Japan
Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my great pleasure to attend the 3rd Meeting of the Asia Forest Partnership (AFP). First of all, allow me to express my warmest and highest gratitude with all sincerity appreciation for joining this very important meeting. On behalf of the Government of Indonesia, I would like to express our gratitude to the Government of Japan for tremendous preparation and organisation of the meeting.
Over the past months have elapsed since we have gathered in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to the second meeting of the AFP at which we concluded concrete and coordinated approaches in promoting sustainable forest management in Asia. Discussion on the working group, namely (1) forest certification as a means to verify legality; (2) forest fires and trans-boundary haze pollution; and (3) rehabilitation and reforestation of degraded land has clearly resulted several activities to be implemented and addressed.
I would like to make it clear that promotion of sustainable forest management is of highest interest to Indonesia. Forest is indeed a very important natural resource for Indonesian people in term of economical, ecological, and socio-cultural aspects.
Illegal Logging and related trade in illegally harvested timber play a significant part in the on-going destruction of the forest in Asia, especially in Indonesia. Beside annual economic losses, illegal logging also causes enormous environmental damage and loss of biodiversity, and depletion of wildlife resource.
Although the supply side of the problem lies in timber producing countries, strong international demand for timber will also encourage illegal logging operation and its associated trade. This brings to a situation that forests are managed not on sustainable manner. In this connection, Indonesia is pursuing consumer-timber countries to import only legally harvested timber. Prevention to continued illegal timber trade needs a serious undertaking, both from demand and supply sides, including obtain minimum standards of legality source, commitment on legality from partner governments using independent third-party verification, and build capacity for certification, chain of custody, SFM at both ground and policy levels. However, several constraints are still being faced by tropical timber producers in Asia in implementing forest certification, therefore, I strongly support implementation of phased approaches to certification as a tool to promote sustainable forest management. For this purpose, I suggest that such actions for implementing phased approaches to certification need to be carried out soon.
I am also glad to mention that Indonesia is in a position to work together with all partners to promote sustainable management and combat illegal logging and its associated trade. Some bilateral and multilateral agreements or understanding have been achieved between Indonesia and other countries or international organisation among others are Illegal Logging Response Center (ILRC), which has been established to address illegal logging. In a couple of months, the Government of Indonesia and the European Community will sign an Action Plan on FLEGT.
In addressing forest fires, I sought the conditions that early warning system development of forest fire with various campaigns through media, email and homepage are not yet carried out effectively, and also give un-real impact of community participation in forest fire prevention. Therefore, some more realistic and focus activities should be developed under the Partnership. I fully agree with the recommendations made during the previous meeting which need general actions on forest fire management including gathering of information on on-going activities, comparing and discussing different approaches: techniques, country's studies, establish task force / (small) working group to study in depth on specific issues and report results to the next meeting, capacity (assessment) building covered institutions, personnel, etc, and secure funding.
Some efforts carried out by Indonesia to control forest fires are establishing brigade of forest fire suppression, known as MANGGALA AGNI, publishing manual of forest fire prevention, provision of equipment and facilities to the fragile areas, conducting training for a new forest fire brigade, and campaigning to the local people directly and indirectly (Newspaper, TV's, etc.) regarding forest fire prevention.
In addressing reforestation and degraded land rehabilitation, I realize that for such a long time rehabilitation activities had just been government actions rather than community or society movement. Therefore, activity to encourage community participation is a key success issue of the reforestation and rehabilitation movement. In line with this, I think we need to convene a regional workshop on promoting potential of small-scale tropical plantation with local community participation.
On this occasion, I would like to inform that some concrete actions have been made in rehabilitation and reforestation of degraded forest and land in Indonesia. The national movement in forest and land rehabilitation (GNRHL) is targeted to rehabilitate 3 million hectares of degraded forest and land in 5 years starting from 2003 to 2007.
In collaboration with the Government of Japan, Mangrove Information Centre has also been established in Bali, the purpose of which is to institutionally strengthen in terms of ability to conduct training on sustainability mangrove management. For consolidation all the activities of the first phase have been carried out since, it is hoped that Japan can, immediately, extend the project.
As we all may be aware, the Asia Forest Partnership is at early stage of its development and has the opportunity becoming a leading frontrunner in sustainable forest management. However, decisions for structure of AFP is really needed including resource and funding to support several activities of the Partnership. We still assume that development of secretariat including placement of permanent staff is still important to realize which hopefully can support communications within partners optimally. However, the issues to be considered include the funding for the establishment and the operational cost.
I do believe that with a wide collaborative support from various partners, the AFP would lead the way to successful implementation of our intended partnership.
These are the points that I would like to share with you on the condition, problems, policy and hopes in the context of the Asia Forest Partnership. I attach a high expectation of the contribution of all partners to the solution of our problems in achieving Sustainable Forest Management.
With that wish I would like to conclude my words. Thank you.
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