Deforestation & Certification

Deforestation & Certification

What do we know about desert in middle east now is certainly different if we live 9,000 years ago. At that time, the forest was still thick, there were thousands of lakes, fertile farm, and ancient elephant and hippopotamus that can’t live in dry environment. It’s all the past, now it has changed to desert. Initially, it is because of human production activities which use nature for agriculture production and subsistence activity. Hereafter, the forest exploitation politics of ancient middle east civilization used it for infrastructure construction. Furthermore, climate crises which also has a role on changing wet climate into dry. We learn from this story about how human, politics, and climate have roles in the change of landscape, one of them is forest damage. Then, how is the current forest destruction?

Based on the data from Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in the last 30 years, our earth lost very vast of forest; 178 million ha or equivalent to the land area of Indonesia if it is subtracted by Sumbawa island area. There are various causes. In 1990-2000, the main cause of deforestation is because a massive forest exploitation and reckless, regardless of regeneration ability of the trees and forest. In global scale in 2000 until now, 40 % of deforestation cause is the large scale of plantation and agriculture. The other cause is subsistence agriculture, the population growth, urban expansion, infrastructure, and mining. Currently, our earth is still covered by 30 % of forest or about 4.06 million ha where 0.5 ha of the forest bears 1 person’s live. So, how about Indonesia? If we calculate with the same way since 30 years ago, the highest deforestation occurred in period 1996 – 2000, that is 3.5 million ha/year. Then, in period 2002 – 2014, decreased between 600,000 until 400,000 ha. Finally, the lowest point of deforestation rate was in 2020 in the amount of 115,000 ha.

Before we calculate the forest destruction in 1990, we will ask you to be back off a little to look how the story of forest exploitation history from after World War II until 1980’s. FAO report which was published in 1966 showed that timber consumption rate from tropical forest increased significantly in two stages, that is 1950–1965; then

those years until 1990’s. In the first stage, the increase of global timber consumption is followed by forest destruction that is needed to rebuilt countries that have been financially exhausted because of World War II. Meanwhile, in the next period, the forest destruction happened because of the growth of development regime in the third world. As the illustration, FAO estimated, every year between 19811990, the world was losing tropical forest in the amount of 16.7 million ha. This number is three times of the forest loss number in the last 30 years. In the 1980’s period, we were facing very massive forest destruction. And also in those years, there were important moments about the new way to overcome this destruction, such as timber boycott from tropical forest until forest certification which what people call as labelization.

In an interesting article concerning forestry certification, Klooster divides the growth of the attempt to overcome the damage in 4 phases of civil society movement and certain parties, from 1980’s until now: First, Boycott timber from tropical forest and direct-action targets big timber trader and logging company. Second, environment organizations joined with timber trader to develop environment certification as the alternative of boycott and also unsatisfied expression of national and international government in forest management. Third, non-governmental organization coalition, inter-government organizations aggressively promote certification by giving pressure to the traders to ask certified forest products from their supplier, and by giving incentive to the forest manager to certify their forests. Fourth, which is now still on going, the certification promotors try to increase environment effect through a program in order to make it more accessible and to give benefit for the forest manager. From all the stages, Klooster concluded that certification with this non-governmental approach or voluntary scheme has run and well documented, but instead of reducing forest damage, the profit of this certification is still dominated by big companies which have applied it, than small scale forest manager in south world which tries to enter this scheme, with a great cost, and reverse feedback.

From certification with non-governmental and voluntary approach, new approach tries to be applied through timber

legality (and the verification) with governmental and mandatory approach. There are 2 main causes the shift from sustainable scheme (voluntary) to legality (mandatory): First, the slow progress of certification until 2005 where it is only 10 % certified forest in the world, it is presumed because the certification standard is too heavy for growth countries. Therefore, it needs to be thought the solution of the cause (bottleneck) which one of them is legality issue. Second, the desire of state institution to be able to take back the power in institution and governance of forest and timber, because in voluntary certification, the power is in the market, not in the state.

The difference is clearly visible, where forest certification is a market scheme which is encouraged by environment awareness from non-governmental organizations, that is emphasized to the timber sellers and buyers, and it is enforced to all over the world with the same standard. These two certification bodies can be called Forest Steward Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). In Indonesia, there was also arisen the similar body, that is Indonesia Ecolabelling Institute (LEI) in 1990’s. A series of standard is being diplayed which culminates in the mention that forest is managed sustainably and the timber is produced from a sustainable management and production. While timber legality approach wants to present a legal timber product which means in the harvesting, transport, and the processing are using legal way. State-based approach is the country of destination and the origin country, as a critique of sustainable forest certification has not answered the problems on corruption and the acknowledgement of indigenous people/local communities rights of natural resources. As well as the critism of this certification in the country of destination country, that is giving profit to the big companies in the capacity to meet green market. Then, comes the initiative from destination country (consumers), such as USA with Lacey Act 2008, Europe with EU Timber Regulation 2013 (First time in 2005), and Japan with Clean Wood Act 2016. The origin countries or the producers also welcomed it by setting a standard and criteria about what is legal and make a deal towards certain mechanism in the consumer countries, included Indonesia.