New EIA report out today ...

Originally shared by Environmental Investigation Agency

New EIA report out today ...

'Palm oil plantation crime drives massive illegal logging in Indonesia'

JAKARTA: The clear-cutting of forests to make way for oil palm plantations is driving a wave of illegal logging in Indonesia, fundamentally undermining efforts to bring much-needed reform to the nation’s forestry and timber sectors.

A new report released today by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Permitting Crime: How palm oil expansion drives illegal logging in Indonesia, reveals how a widespread culture of corruption and poor law enforcement is generating a flood of illicit timber as plantations surge into frontier forests.

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* Read & download the report at http://eia-international.org/permitting-crime-how-palm-oil-expansion-drives-illegal-logging-in-indonesia
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In-depth case studies of blatant violations of licensing procedures and other laws in Central Kalimantan – a hotspot for forest crime – detailed in the report include:

• outright violations of plantation licensing, timber and environmental regulations by firms clear-cutting forests in some of Indonesia’s richest tracts of rainforest;

• clear links between a series of palm oil concessions, a corrupt regent and one of the highest-profile Indonesian political graft cases of recent years;

• attempts by a palm oil firm to pay US$45,000 to police to bury an investigation into its illegal operations;

• local governments selling-out customary communities and facilitating the transfer of millions of dollars of their resources to private firms.

The report explains how almost all palm plantations nationwide are willfully evading Indonesia’s Timber Legality Verification System (Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu, or SVLK), a mandatory law implemented in September 2010 as a cornerstone of efforts to ensure only legal timber is produced in the country.

“Illegal logging in oil palm concessions is out of control and Indonesia’s revamped timber laws have completely failed to rein it in,” said EIA Forest Campaigner Tomasz Johnson.

Read the press release in full at http://eia-international.org/palm-oil-plantation-crime-drives-illegal-logging-in-indonesia

#Indonesia #palmoil #deforestation

Image: Canals dug to drain peat soils in PT Nusantara Sawit Persada, Indonesia, July 2013 (c) EIA