07/19/01 -- Indonesia's Forests Decimated by Paper Production and Illegal Logging

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Indonesia's Forests Decimated by Paper Production and Illegal Logging

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://forests.org/links/ -- Forest Conservation Links

07/19/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

The overdeveloped countries are devouring Indonesia's and the World's

rainforests. Most of the timber plundered from Indonesia winds up in

China or Europe, as well as the United States. The Guardian

newspaper of the United Kingdom, a superb media outlet, recently ran

a remarkable expose' highlighting how Britain's paper consumption

significantly contributes to the destruction of Indonesia's

rainforests. Much of their findings were based on a report published

by the Friends of the Earth on the Indonesian paper industry -

entitled Paper Tiger, Hidden Dragons - that details the

responsibility of international financial institutions for Indonesian

forest destruction, social conflict and the paper industry's

financial crisis <http://www.pixunlimited.co.uk/pdf/news/paper.pdf>.

Cheap paper made from cutting down Indonesian rainforests is flooding

into Britain. There has been additional mainstream media coverage of

the ecologically criminal teak trade (attached below).

Indonesia occupies only 1.3% of the world's land area but contains

10% of the world's flowering plant species, 12% of the world's

mammals, 17% of reptiles and amphibians and 17% of all bird species.

The forests provide habitats for species such as the orangutan,

Sumatran tiger and Asian elephant; as well as a home for millions of

people.

Indonesia is heading for an environmental disaster - ecological,

economic and social collapse - having lost more than 70% of its

forests. About 95 million hectares of forest remain but much of this

is in poor condition. Two million hectares - an area the size of

Belgium - is being cut down every year. By 2020 all of Indonesia's

forests may be destroyed. Huge growth in wood pulp and paper

production, and timber production, fuelled by international

investment, is fueling ongoing destruction of some of the most

ecologically significant forests on Earth. Massive illegal logging

threatens even national parks with industrial logging. International

investment and ecologically uninformed consumption provides the

economic incentive for Indonesian and global ecocide.

The attached Guardian reports are truly remarkable in tracing the

illegally gotten timber from ravaged rainforests to seemingly benign

consumption. The paper trail leads from the forests of Indonesia

into the working lives of hundreds of thousands of Britons. Offices,

schools, hospitals and even government departments can be linked

directly or indirectly to rainforest devastation. This happens

around the World daily in the World's overdeveloped countries.

Price, not the environment, is almost always the bottom line. Last

year the G8 leaders endorsed the principle of only using timber from

sustainable sources. However, it is clear that there does not yet

exist adequate mechanisms to trace ill-gotten forest products to

their place of plunder in the World's last remaining forest

wildlands.

The Indonesian government is in chaos and dire economic need drives

individual participation in the rainforest liquidation. The World

Bank's hapless program of more "monitoring" of the plunder is utterly

useless - they should be financing closure of excess forest

production and processing capacity. How are we to save Indonesian

rainforests and livelihoods? Stop buying their forest products, and

organize and take peaceful action to prevent others from doing so.

g.b.

For more information:

Forests.org's Indonesia and Malaysia Rainforest Conservation News &

Information, Most Recent - http://forests.org/indomalay/

P.S. Forests.org's forest conservation email list will be taking a

break until August 1st.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

ITEM #1

Title: Paper Tiger, Hidden Dragons

A summary of the Friends of the Earth report on the Indonesian

paper industry

Date: June 26, 2001

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98, one Indonesian

company, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) seemed to emerge from the economic

chaos relatively unscathed. Before and after the financial crisis,

international financial institutions have queued up to finance and

guarantee the rapid expansion of their operations.

Three years on, however, APP is one of the largest corporate debtors

in Asia, on the verge of bankruptcy, and has been accused of

rainforest destruction, pollution and conflict with local

communities.

Investors and corporate profile APP has assets of $17.5bn, financed

by shareholders (25%), bondholders (38%) and banks (20%). Over 300

international financial institutions have backed the company in the

past ten years. The report provides detailed information on Barclays

Bank, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Deutsche Bank and others. APP is a

Singaporean company belonging to the Indonesian Sinar Mas group

with logging concessions in Indonesia and manufacturing facilities

in Indonesia, China and India. It is the holding company for Sinar

Mas subsidiaries in the pulp and paper sector. APP is listed on the

New York stock exchange.

Indonesia's vanishing forests

Although Indonesia occupies only 1.3% of the world's land area, it

possesses 10% of the world's flowering plant species, 12% of all

mammal species, 17% of all reptile and amphibian species and 17% of

all bird species. The forests provide a home for millions of people

(raising the potential for social conflict) and habitats for species

such as the Orangutan, Sumatran tiger and Asian elephant - but they

are disappearing fast. Global Forest Watch estimates that Indonesia

has now lost 72% of its original cover, and the country's ministry of

forestry and estate crops admits that 1.7m hectares is lost each

year. The World Bank puts it at 2m.

Around 95m hectares of forest remains but much of this is in poor

condition, unsuitable for either logging or supporting the indigenous

populations and wildlife. The World Bank estimates that, unles

logging practices radically change, there will be no quality forest

left in Sumatra by 2005 and none in Kalimantan by 2010. Illegal

logging is also rife, with as much as 73% of timber coming from

undocumented sources, much of this is linked to the pulp and paper

industry.

Report on the Indonesian pulp and paper industry

The Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and WWF

published a report in December 2000 blaming the industry for a high

level of illegal logging. It cited poor government regulation and

high levels of international investment as the main causes.

The authors said that the international financial institutions behind

the funding must accept a large degree of responsibility for the

deforestation and take the lead in ensuring that the Indonesian pulp

and paper industry rapidly changes its management practices to ensure

a legal and sustainable supply of raw materials. It added that APP's

expansion is debt-driven, linked in a vicious circle to resolving

outstanding debts with foreign creditors that leads to more harmful

logging.

APP's debt crisis APP and its subsidiaries owe $13.4bn in debt. To

enhance the problems the company has a complex system of guarantees

between its operations that means that if one subsidiary defaults on

its obligations the whole group could fall.

A debt reduction strategy has failed, due to low global pulp and

paper prices, political instability in Indonesia and the

unsustainable nature of its operations. The report says that

investors took on a huge level of risk when they funded APP that they

had not properly assessed. The share price fell from $7.50 to $0.12

between April 1999 and April 4 2001, when trading was suspended.

Conclusions

The report identifies the following risks, among others, for

investors in the Indonesian pulp and paper industry.

* Unsustainable supply of raw materials

A massive growth in the capacity of the pulp industry, boosted by

international investment has not been matched by efforts to gain a

sustainable supply of raw materials. An estimated 92% of the wood

used for pulp between 1998/99 was sourced from rainforests.

The authors add that financing a company which destroys a large part

of the second richest forest habitat in the world carries "a

significant degree of reputational risk."

* Illegal logging

The WWF-CIFOR report calculates that as much as 40% of the wood used

by Indonesian pulp producers between 1995 and 1999 came from illegal

sources.

* Distorted global paper market

By offering paper products at such low cost - undercutting most of

their competitors - APP may have lowered world prices and contributed

to its mounting debt problem.

* Social conflict

A plantation project in Sarawak, Mayalsia, backed by APP, has become

a focus for opposition from indigenous groups. The courts have backed

the Iban people in one case against the company and APP has now lost

its rights - granted by the Malaysian government - to use part of

their land. The report says that pulping operations can become a

"political risk" and details fighting between the employees of

another company, Arara Abadi, and the indigenous Sakai people.

* Covert marketing

APP is flooding the market with unbranded and rebranded paper

products as part of a strategy to hide the source. The authors

recommend that investors should consider the risks inherent in

financing a company that works in this way, especially since APP has

"covered up the environmental impact of its operations".

The report says that lessons learned from the APP crisis should be

applied by financial institutions to all their pulp and paper

operations. "Without ensuring that their investments are both

socially and environmentally sustainable, their investments will not

be economically sustainable," it says.

Recommendations

* Financial institutions should fully assess the risks involved with

the pulp and paper sector to ensure they are not providing funds for

illegal or unsustainable practices.

* No funds should be provided for any new paper processing in

Indonesia or Malaysia for the forseeable future.

* Those supporting APP should take immediate action to ensure that

the fibre supply to the pulp mills comes from sustainable sources.

* There should be no investment in projects that are likely to

generate social conflict.

* To ensure the long term survival of the pulp and paper industry,

funders should back companies that use agricultural waste and

recycled materials as a replacement for timber.

ITEM #2

Title: Rainforests in peril

Offices, schools, hospitals at end of paper trail from diminishing

forests

Public bodies buy Indonesian products despite commitments to

protect the environment

Date: June 26, 2001

The APP paper trail leads from the forests of Indonesia into the

working lives of hundreds of thousands of Britons. Offices, schools,

hospitals and even government departments can be linked directly or

indirectly into the trail.

Most users of paper produced by Asia Pulp and Paper or its

subsidiaries have no idea the scribbling pad or the photocopying

paper comes from Indonesia, because the trail is convoluted and

sometimes involves repackaging the paper under a merchant's brand

name. Moreover price, not the environment, is almost always the

bottom line.

Government departments and other public bodies conscious of their

image are more careful about where their paper comes from, though not

all are prepared to name their suppliers, claiming the information is

confidential. However, the Guardian has learned that Whitehall

departments and the NHS do, at the very least, trade with companies

with close links with APP.

A big problem is a lack of guidance or even reliable information.

There is no list of approved suppliers whose credentials have been

independently checked. It is up to each department and local

authority to choose where they get their paper from. Devolution also

means that schools and NHS trusts largely control their own budgets

and so choose their suppliers.

Confidentiality

Following APP's paper through the system from the docks to the office

is very difficult. APP refuses to say who its customer are, claiming

client confidentiality. However, the Guardian has identified a number

of routes through which the paper passes.

The first trail begins at APP UK in Old Hatfield, Hertfordshire. The

company supplies some of the most important merchants in Britain with

products such as copier paper and paper for printing.

One of its big customers is Robert Horne, part of the huge Buhrmann

group. In the UK, Robert Horne is said to have a 10,000-strong

customer base. It buys paper from APP, mostly "cut size" (A4) and

destined for photocopying machines.

Robert Horne's buying director, Martin Stears, revealed that it sold

paper to "government bodies, agencies and departments" as well as to

corporations.

He refused to confirm whether any government departments did buy APP

paper from Robert Horne but said they would certainly be offered APP

paper. Clearly, some government officials are aware that Robert Horne

deals with APP and continue trading with Mr Stears's company.

Like most paper companies, Robert Horne has an environmental policy.

It claims to "monitor suppliers on their commitment to environmental

best practice".

Asked about APP, Mr Stears said he believed it "highly unlikely" that

it clear cut forests or set forest fires. He admitted that in "world

terms" APP would not be "at the top of the environmental list", but

it had the ISO 14001 standard certificate. "One has to accept that

these awards are accurate. They are doing their best within the

environment they are operating in."

Another significant company that sells on APP paper is Howard Smith,

also in the Buhrmann group. A spokeswoman for Howard Smith said the

revelations about APP were "quite a shock".

She said her company had approached APP after inquiries by the

Guardian and been assured that "nothing untoward" was going on.

A second main route through which APP has passed in the past few

years is via an operation based in Cardiff which has gone under the

names Nisar and Rasin, none too subtle anagrams of APP's holding

company, Sinar Mas, and more lately has called itself Sinar Paper and

finally APP.

The operation, run by Nigel Bircham, has imported products such as

photocopy paper, listing paper for old-style computer printers and

memo pads from Indonesia.

Mr Bircham, claimed he did not know who most of the products' end-

users were because they were sold through wholesalers. He refused to

name the few customers he sold direct to and declined to name the

wholesalers he dealt with.

The Guardian has discovered that Mr Bircham has been selling paper on

to at least two of Britain's biggest wholesalers, Spicers, based near

Cambridge, and Kingfield Heath, based in Sheffield. At their

warehouses APP paper has been repack aged under the companies' brand

names, 5 Star at Spicers and Q Connect at Kingfield Heath. These are

no fly-by-night firms. Indeed, Spicers' sister company is the maker

of Basildon Bond, John Dickinson.

Spicers' environmental management policy statement claims that the

company recognises the importance of protecting the environment: "We

intend to work towards a better environment through the business

practices we encourage and through the products we offer."

Its managing director, Graeme Loudain, said that after some "digging"

he was satisfied about APP. He, like many other customers, relied on

the fact that it had the ISO 14001 certificate.

With 16 branches in the UK and Ireland, Kingfield Heath's "vision" is

to be "remarkably successful... while maintaining high ethical

standards". But its chief executive, Alan Hickman, said: "We were

unaware that there were any specific environmental issues with APP."

Network

From the warehouses of these companies APP products have been passed

on to a huge network of smaller suppliers. Because the paper is

repackaged, those further down the chain do not know its origin. And

such information is deemed commercially sensitive.

The Guardian tracked computer listing paper from Cardiff through

Spicers to a group of dealers, on to an individual dealer and finally

to a school in Hertfordshire. The bursar there said she had no idea

where the paper came from and admitted that, in any case, cost had to

come before environmental issues.

The supplier, Ray Peirce, of Office Point, Dunstable, said: "I'm sure

if you asked 1,000 people 999 would say it doesn't matter where it

comes from. It's price they are interested in... If we said we were

selling more expensive but environmentally friendly paper we wouldn't

sell any."

APP in Hatfield recently announced that Mr Bircham's business was

closing. However, it has told customers that it intends to make its

listing paper available through another well-known company,

communisis bbf, formerly Bowater. It supplies the NHS and believes

its products are also used by central government.

It is hard to pinpoint which public bodies use paper from APP.

Despite the government promise to be the first to make sure all its

agencies use paper from sustainable sources, some departments refuse

to discuss suppliers.

The Department for Education and Skills said: "The paper used in this

department is principally from sustainable resources. The department

adheres to green procurement procedures." But suppliers were

"commercial in confidence".

A spokesperson for APP said: "APP's name and/or the mill producing

the products are clearly printed on most of our products." But he

also admitted: "There may be some products with only the brand names

printed, but this is in line with the industry practice."

ITEM #2

Title: Rainforests hit by paper trail to UK

Special report: the paper trail

Date: June 26, 2001

By: Paul Brown, Steven Morris and John Aglionby

Cheap paper made from cutting down Indonesian rainforest, an industry

which is endangering some of the world's rarest animals, is flooding

into Britain, a Guardian investigation has revealed.

Public bodies are among those using the paper produced by Asia Pulp

and Paper (APP), despite government calls that only products from

sustainable sources should be used.

It has also emerged that APP, Indonesia's biggest pulp and paper

producer, and some of its subsidiaries have received considerable

financial backing from British banks, including NatWest.

Conservationists say Indonesia is heading for an environmental

disaster. It is estimated the country has lost more than 70% of its

forests. A report by the World Bank has warned that 2m hectares - an

area the size of Belgium - is being cut down every year and there are

fears that by 2020 all of Indonesia's forests could have been

destroyed.

The forests are home to 12% of the world's mammal species and almost

a fifth of bird species. Unless the destruction is halted, species

including the Sumatran rhinoceros, Sumatran tiger and orang-utan

could become extinct.

Yet the amount of paper arriving in Britain from Indonesia has

increased rapidly. In the late 90s, imports of Indonesian paper rose

from 10,000 tonnes a year to 85,000 tonnes.

Last year the G8 leaders endorsed the principle of only using timber

from sustainable sources. Environment minister Michael Meacher said

Britain would be the first country to insist that government

departments and agencies buy timber products (including paper) from

sustainable and legal sources.

The government's central procurement agency now says that as much

paper as possible comes from recycled sources. But Whitehall has no

method of discovering where the timber and paper it uses originates.

There is nothing to stop schools, hospitals and local authorities

buying products from APP. The Guardian has spoken to schools which

taught pupils the importance of the environment while purchasing

paper which could be traced back to APP.

In Britain APP paper is sold either under the names APP or Sinar, or

repackaged by paper merchants and sold under their brand names. This

paper is distributed through buying groups and suppliers. By the time

most customers get their paper it has passed through so many

middlemen that they cannot be sure of its origins.

Friends of the Earth produced a report in which it names crucial

investors - such as NatWest - whom it wants to pressurise APP to

change the way it operates.

Ed Matthew, of the FoE, said: "Huge growth in wood pulp and paper

production, fuelled by international investment, has caused

destruction of some of the most precious forests on earth."

ITEM #3

Title: Fisherman driven to illegal logging as pulp factory poisons

River

Sumatran communities put at risk

Date: June 26, 2001

By: John Aglionby in Perawang, Sumatra

Timbulan and his friends waist deep in the river were struggling to

keep up with the arrival of fresh wood. Every few minutes another

canoe trailing a dozen 5ft logs would arrive at the unloading site.

The loggers unhitched their cargo of tropical hardwood freshly

stripped from the rapidly shrinking rainforest and headed back to the

jungle for another load.

Timbulan's gang untied the wood and hauled it on to the riverbank.

"Once we've got enough for a truckload, it's taken away to the

factory," he said, pointing to five chimneys less than a mile away.

Every step in this chain is illegal. The loggers have no permits to

destroy the rainforest and take the wood to Perawang, a small town

half-way up Sumatra. Timbulan and his friends have no right to buy it

and sell it on to the pulp factory, for whom it is a serious offence

to buy illegally felled timber.

The factory is Indah Kiat Pulp and Paper, a monster blot on the

landscape that is not only the lifeblood of the provincial economy

but is also one of the few jewels left in the crown of the holding

company, Asia Pulp and Paper.

It arrived in the area 17 years ago with plans for an environmentally

friendly, sustainable pulp and paper factory that would be a boon to

the remote region of Indonesia. Its aim was to clear just enough

rainforest to plant fast-growing trees.

But Indah Kiat's track record has been a catalogue of environmental

devastation, blatant disrespect for the local community and ignoring

Indonesia's laws through a mixture of bullying and pay-offs to

officials.

Timbulan has only recently become an illegal logger. Three years ago

he was one of hundreds who made their living fishing in the river

Siak that runs through Perawang and past Indah Kiat. "Now there are

no fish left," he said. "They have all been poisoned by the factory,

so chopping down the forest is the only way we can make money."

Each fisherman's daily catch used to average 10kg, according to

Nurdin, whose house backs on to the river. "Now those few people who

still do it are lucky if they catch one or two - fish, not kilograms

- a day," he said.

People such as Timbulan will soon face a new crisis, because studies

show that Sumatra's forests will all be destroyed in five to 10

years. These forests are among the most biodiverse places on earth.

Though Indonesia accounts for only 1% of the world's land area, it is

home to 12% of the world's mammal species, and almost a fifth of all

bird species and reptile and amphibian species.

Animals most at risk from the destruction of the rainforest include

the Sumatran rhinoceros, Sumatran tiger and orangutan. There has been

a 50% decline in the numbers of orang-utan and rhino over the last

decade. There are only 300 rhinos left in the wild, as few as 400

tigers.

People who live on the river are forced to buy drinking water because

the water from their wells smells of chemicals, particularly

chlorine.

Then there is the smoke. In recent years it has not come only from

the factory but also from huge forest fires that left a haze over the

whole of south-east Asia, particularly in 1997-98. While Indah Kiat

has never been accused of starting fires for its own benefit, 80% of

the big fires in 1997 were started by plantation companies, according

to the government, and those accused of having fires on their land

included APP suppliers.

Yunus Tibo, a community leader, has letters going back to the early

1990s from the government condemning Indah Kiat for its environmental

management and ordering a clean-up, and promises from the company

that it will comply.

The Guardian acquired a list of payments made by Indah Kiat to

government officials and police and army officers. Some are described

as "for helping hiring a car", while others are blatantly catalogued

as "monthly honorarium".

Mr Tibo said Indah Kiat had given a few hundred million rupiah

(o18,000) to the community. "But they promised us 3bn rupiah," he

said. "Where's the rest?"

Indah Kiat declined to comment and was "unable to accommodate" a

visit to the plant.

ITEM #4

Title: Lust for Teak Takes Grim Toll; Illegal logging decimating

Indonesia's majestic forests

Date: June 25, 2001

By: Edward A; Gargan; ASIA CORRESPONDENT

Bangsri, Indonesia-The last of central Java's great teakwood forests

ends up in places like this, a place filled with the whine of buzz

saws and the burr of electric sanders, a place like Abdul Jambari's

garden-furniture workshop.

"This is for export," Jambari says, stroking the finely polished arm

of an auburn-grained folding chair. "It's the best teak, what we call

class A." And because his order book is full, a month or two from

now, for about $100, Jambari's chair will sit on a patio or deck

somewhere in the United States or Europe.

But that chair and the 4,000 others that are part of Jambari's latest

export shipment have left behind a swath of utter devastation, one of

thousands that afflict this archipelago and spell the end of the

majestic forests that once blanketed Indonesia. Their disappearance

also means the extinction of innumerable animal and plant species

indigenous to this country.

"We are facing a cataclysm," said Togu Manurung, the director of

Forest Watch Indonesia, an environmental organization that documents

the destruction of the country's forests. "That is not an

exaggeration. Our forests are disappearing faster now than under

Suharto. It is worse than any time in Indonesia's history."

The tropical forests of Indonesia, one-tenth of the world's total,

have fallen victim in part to the virtual collapse of political

authority in this southeast Asian nation of a thousand islands and

more than 200 million people, the fourth-largest population in the

world. The toppling three years ago of the regime of President

Suharto, a close U.S. ally whose three-decade rule often ruthlessly

imposed order, has been followed by widespread violent upheaval,

including multiple secessionist movements. In this chaotic tmosphere,

illegal logging has gone unchecked.

In an unpublished report on the state of Indonesia's forests, the

World Bank found that all the lowland forests in one of the country's

largest islands, Sumatra ("forest that is usually the richest source

of timber and which carries the highest biodiversity") will be

extinct before 2005, and in Kalimantan, the island formerly known as

Borneo, by 2010. Swamp forests, according to the report, will

disappear five years later. In the past decade, the rate of

Indonesia's deforestation has accelerated from 2.47 million acres

annually, to 4.2 million acres.

Based on an analysis of satellite photos of Indonesia's forests, the

report, written by Derek Holmes, a consultant to the World Bank, and

made available to Newsday, contends that unless the government acts

immediately to stop rampant illegal logging, "the only extensive

forests that will remain in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi in the

second decade of the new millennium will be the low stature forests

of the mountains."

For people like Manurung, there is little evidence that the

government, in disarray over the impending impeachment of President

Abdurrahman Wahid and beset by waves of bloody sectarian and ethnic

conflict, is capable of slowing the destruction of the forests.

"Illegal logging is going on everywhere," he said. "Lots of people

are involved. Lots of these people have connections - high-ranking

officials, members of parliament, the army, police, local officials."

Even national parks are being logged at a frenetic pace. On

Kalimantan, the Tanjung Puting National Park, designated by the

United Nations as a "Biosphere Reserve," a term bestowed on lands of

exceptional plant and animal diversity, is being systematically and

illegally logged, according to reports by Forest Watch and another

environmental group, Telepak Indonesia, as well as Indonesia's

Ministry of Forestry and Estate Crops.

Suripto, the secretary general of the forestry ministry (like many

Indonesians, he goes by only one name) charged last year that lumber

companies and sawmills owned by a member of parliament were illegally

processing ramin logs, the most valuable tree in the national park

whose blond, straight-grained wood is used extensively in furniture,

wood moldings, blinds and pool cues. Despite his findings, which

followed an extensive investigation, the logging has continued and

the member of parliament, Abdul Raysid, remains untouched by the law.

He did not respond to repeated messages left at his office at the

Tanjung Lingga Group, his logging and lumber-processing company.

So extensive is Raysid's influence in the area that the first

chairman of a commission intended to oversee the management and

conservation of the Tanjung Puting National Park was Raysid's

brother.

"You must understand that people like Raysid are like Robin Hood in

their localities," said Manurung, of Forest Watch. "They put a lot of

money into their communities and they have a lot of support from

local people. So when government investigators, or investigators from

groups like ours, go to the park to check on logging, there are gangs

that try to intimidate us. Some people have been beaten up."

Most of the timber plundered from the national park and from

Indonesia's other forests winds up in China or Europe, as well as the

United States, according to environmental groups here.

Here in Bangsri, a nub of land protruding from the northern rim of

central Java, local officials maintain that a breakdown of law and

authority has fueled the surge in illegal logging, and with it, the

end of the forests here.

A battered macadam road, two lane, meanders over hills and into

valleys, past scrub land, tentative fields of corn and vast scars of

rust-colored earth. Everywhere, stumps of what were once towering

teak trees pepper the landscape, giving the appearance of an immense

parchment written in braille.

"In 1999, this was all forest," said Rahmat Wijaya, the district

manager for the state logging company, Perhutani, his hand sweeping

across a barren vista stretching toward distant hills. "That year,

thousands of people came and cut down the trees, local people and

people from outside, both. The last tree was taken in November 2000.

There was nothing we could do."

Private logging was not permitted in Bangsri, Wijaya said, only

managed logging by the state company. But Suharto was compelled by

mass protests to step down in May 1998, and with him went the

authoritarian regime that had kept everyone in line. Under Suharto,

logging was big business, but it was a business confined to the

president's cronies, particularly Mohamad "Bob" Hasan, who was

granted the most extensive logging concessions in the country. Hasan

is now in prison for corruption, and the collapse of the Suharto

regime was soon followed by a huge upsurge in illegal logging.

"Due to the reform era," said Wijaya, referring to the post-Suharto

government of President Wahid, "the police and army are powerless to

do anything. There is a huge logging mafia that came here and cut all

the trees. All of this land belongs to the state company, but there

was nothing we could do. They came with trucks and chainsaws. Now, we

have no more natural teakwood forests."

In Indonesia, a country bathed in corruption, there is a special word

used to describe theft on a truly massive scale: "penjarahan."

"It is penjarahan," Wijaya said of the unchecked clear cutting.

"Everything was taken."

In one field, he pointed to motley rows of 4-foot-high broad-leaf

teak saplings. "We have never tried to re-plant teak trees before,"

he explained, "but we are trying now. This is the first time. It

takes 60 years to grow a teak tree. I will not be here when these are

grown, if they survive."

Not far from where the teak forests used to be, H.M. Sugito sat,

somewhat disconsolately, on a massive mahogany log at his lumber

yard. "It's true," he said, surveying piles of teak logs and a

scattering of 8-foot-long mahogany tree trunks. "We have no more

forests here. They're all gone. So now, I have to get my logs from

elsewhere, from other places in Indonesia."

Asked if the teak logs in his roadside yard were legally cut, he

shrugged. "When people bring logs here, we buy them," he said, a

price list for his logs dangling from his fingers. "Why ask

questions?" At his yard, a teak log slightly over 6 feet long and a

foot in diameter sells for $290; the huge mahogany logs, 8 feet long

and nearly 3 feet in width, go for $445.

Some of those logs find their way to Abdul Jambari's furniture shop

and to dozens like it scattered over this peninsula. "I've been

making chairs for eight years," he said, scrutinizing a newly

finished slat-backed chair that was carried from the open-air

workshop. "I guess about 75 percent of these are for export, to the

United States, Australia, Europe, 17 countries in all."

And the teak? "We get teak from dealers," he said. "They have logs,

and we buy them. I can't say where they come from."

To Manurung of Forest Watch, such practices explain why his country's

forests are vanishing. "You have to remember that the total capacity

of the wood processing industry and the pulp and paper processing

industry is 80 million cubic meters," said. "Legal logging produces

17 million cubic meters. So you can see that there is a huge gap

between supply and demand. And that gap is made up from illegal

logging."

Sipping iced tea in the restaurant during a break from lobbying

officials at the forestry ministry, he held out little hope. "This

country is on the brink of disintegration," he said. "This country is

on the brink of bankruptcy. How are we ever going to protect our

forests?"

Land in an Uproar - A look at the ethnic, religious and political

uprisings across Indonesia 1:ACEH PROVINCE. Muslim

militants have stepped up a decades-old fight for independence. More

than 600 have died this year. 2:KALIMANTAN. For years, native ethnic

Dayaks have battled settlers from the smaller island of Madura, whom

they accuse of taking over land and jobs. Dayaks massacred hundreds

of Madurese in March. 3:MOLUCCA ISLANDS. Since 1999, Muslim-

Christian fighting has killed at least 5,000 people. 4:EAST TIMOR.

Becoming independent under UN supervision. It has not recovered from

a 1999 uprising by army-backed militias who killed hundreds and

destroyed towns. 5:WEST PAPUA (Irian Jaya). Almost 40 years after

Indonesia seized this mineral-rich territory, many of its people

still demand independence.

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