People Monitor
Timber Legality and Indigenous People Rights SVLK Monitoring in West Papua “Indigenous people community has lost their land and natural resources as the impact of granting permits over the forest without knowing by the community. This monitoring will support the community to prove that the SVLK implementation by the permit holder uses a lot of illegal methods for the timber management so that the management rights can be returned to the community.” PIETER, an Independent Monitor from Moskona indigenous people of Teluk Bintuni West Papua (19 January 2021)
Illegal logging is logs harvesting which is in contrary to the law and formal rules. What is called legal in formal regulations is often considered not legal according to indigenous people. Vise versa, what becomes the daily living practices are sometimes considered illegal by the Government. In Papua, where the practice of a massive illegal logging of tropical forest is rampant for timber interest and the change of land use, gives direct impact to the local indigenous people’s survival. There are also different perspectives on what is legal and illegal between the government, business actors, and indigenous people. What is Mr. Pieter said is an example of a case how does the legal definition of timber relate to legal definition of land. Legal according to whom and for what benefit? That’s the question. Some of these things have actually been accommodated in regulations on timber legality. But still not considered enough because of the complex regulations in the implementation in the field. In addition, the legal definition in the sense of traceability of origin timber or chain of custody is not ignored in transactions of the seller and the buyer, as long as the timber documents have been completed. So, since the 2000’s, the idea emerged to entrust the traceability of wood-to-wood DNA testing (deoxyribonucleic acid). This test is scientifically and authentically able to speak about the true origin of wood, beyond document legality. However, this process requires technology, costs, time and human competence to do it. To go beyond document legality and traceability with DNA wood, why don’t we rely on knowledge of indigenous people/local communities who have a direct interest in forest sustainability? In this case, the
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