Indonesia's recovery takes toll on forests

Village of loggers
The coastal village of Lhoong is typical of the transformation taking places in many mountain hamlets, where villagers have joined former rebels in logging illegally, sometimes with the tacit approval of local authorities.

Once considered too dangerous because of the war, it is now alive with the buzz of chain saws. Men load timber they admit is illegal into trucks.

“Before, no one dared go to the mountains,” said Aini, 26, a villager who like many Indonesians goes by one name. As she talked with a reporter, a steady stream of loggers passed by on a dirt road lined with piles of freshly cut wood.

“We warn them about the negative effects of logging,” she said, “but it’s all about the money.”

Leuser International Foundation, in a report this year, said at least 120,000 metric tons of illegal Leuser logs were trucked to the port city of Medan in 2005. Some were then transported across Sumatra to the tsunami-hit coast and sold to aid groups, it said.

Among those accused of using illegal wood to build homes or fishing boats is a Turkish organization, International Brotherhood and Solidarity Association, which said it did so unwittingly, and Medecins Sans Frontieres Belgium.

“We got timber from a supplier whom we thought was kosher,” MSF Belgium’s Erwin van’t Land told The Associated Press.

“In all honesty, in that emergency we didn’t have the resources to determine where the supplier would get the wood from,” he said. “When we were told that some of the wood was potentially from illegal logging, we were already quite far into the boat project.”

Complicating factors
International aid agencies say compliance can be difficult, given an Indonesian system where timber documents are sometimes forged and officials bribed.

Complicating matters further, few aid groups have the experts on staff to navigate the system and inspect mills to make sure their suppliers are legal, especially when they are rushing to alleviate a disaster.

“Obtaining timber is not complex, but if you haven’t planned appropriately and don’t have the expertise, the simplest answer is just to go out and buy the timber in front of you,” the WWF’s Ashton said.

Aceh reconstruction requires an estimated 1.4 million cubic feet of lumber, and with more than 100 agencies building homes, some have had to wait weeks for delivery. Even the United Nations has had shipments held up by paperwork disputes with the government.

Lumber prices, too, have jumped significantly, forcing some agencies to scale back reconstruction plans.

CARE International said it stopped buying from Aceh in May and has suspended construction of 1,400 homes because it hasn’t found a legitimate supplier outside the province.

“The international community has to be pragmatic,” CARE’s Rossella Bartoloni said. Legal timber sources are essential, she said, “but we can’t allow the lack of one construction material to stop communities from starting their new lives.”

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