Indra Harsaputra , THE JAKARTA POST

East Java Police are hunting down members of an illegal logging syndicate who have been targeting teak forests in Lumajang.

The crime has caused the state to suffer billions of rupiah in losses.

These illegal logging practice in Lumajang have been taking place for years. The stolen logs being sold to furniture producers in Pasuruan.

Widespread illegal logging activities, according to data from the Lumajang regency administration, have led to the disappearance of up to 116 out of 480 water sources in the regency, due to environmental damage.

An officer of the local detection and crime unit, Adj. Sr. Comr. I Nyoman Komin, said that the police had so far arrested one illegal logging gang boss identified only by his initials (SHS) and one of his employees, (WH), on March 6, 2009.

The two have been named suspects, and detained under Article 50 Paragraph 3 of Law No. 41/1999 on forestry, Nyoman said, under which the two faced imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of up to Rp 5 billion.

When the employee was arrested he was about to transport 15 logs worth Rp 600 million (US$50,000) by 14 trucks, he said.

“SHS (the boss) has admitted to have acted as the buyer of the stolen logs. He has been doing this since 2006, making billions of rupiah from criminal activities,” Nyoman said on Friday.

Nyoman said that the police confiscated the trucks used to transport the stolen logs as well as two large chainsaws and two hand chainsaws, all retained as evidence.

“The police are also hunting down other members of the illegal logging syndicate in Lumajang, possibly involving other big bosses,” he said.

According to I Nyoman, SHS admitted he and other syndicate members illegally felled trees in forest areas in Payun Kelopo, Watu Gedhek and Romo Pandan. Sometimes they also stole logs from Pasuruan and Malang, he said.

“The harvested logs were usually placed in man-made ponds and when the time was right were mixed with logs harvested by local residents which were then sent to the warehouse of the CV SRA company,” he said, without giving further details about this firm.

Nyoman continued that the stolen logs were then sold to a furniture making center in Pasuruan. A teak log of the best quality could be sold for Rp 8 million per cubic meter.

“Part of the evidence confiscated from SHS is piled up in warehouses belonging to the furniture producers in Pasuruan. But the police could not do anything about this because parts of the logs had already been made into furniture,” Nyoman said.

Many furniture producers said they were not aware that the logs supplied by SHS were illegal because the latter managed to falsify documentation on the origin of the logs indicating they were harvested from production forests, he added.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/03/30/police-hunt-down-illegal-logging-syndicate.html-0

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Source: The New York Times

While I’m convinced that our current financial crisis is the product of both The Market and Mother Nature hitting the wall at once — telling us we need to grow in more sustainable ways — some might ask this: We know when the market hits a wall. It shows up in red numbers on the Dow. But Mother Nature doesn’t have a Dow. What makes you think she’s hitting a wall, too? And even if she is: Who cares? When my 401(k) is collapsing, it’s hard to worry about my sea level rising.

It’s true, Mother Nature doesn’t tell us with one simple number how she’s feeling. But if you follow climate science, what has been striking is how insistently some of the world’s best scientists have been warning — in just the past few months — that climate change is happening faster and will bring bigger changes quicker than we anticipated just a few years ago. Indeed, if Mother Nature had a Dow, you could say that it, too, has been breaking into new (scientific) lows.

Consider just two recent articles:

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 1, that “the pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said. ‘We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations,’ Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said.”

The physicist and climate expert Joe Romm recently noted on his blog, climateprogress.org, that in January, M.I.T.’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change quietly updated its Integrated Global System Model that tracks and predicts climate change from 1861 to 2100. Its revised projection indicates that if we stick with business as usual, in terms of carbon-dioxide emissions, average surface temperatures on Earth by 2100 will hit levels far beyond anything humans have ever experienced.

“In our more recent global model simulations,” explained M.I.T., “the ocean heat-uptake is slower than previously estimated, the ocean uptake of carbon is weaker, feedbacks from the land system as temperature rises are stronger, cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases over the century are higher, and offsetting cooling from aerosol emissions is lower. Not one of these effects is very strong on its own, and even adding each separately together would not fully explain the higher temperatures. [But,] rather than interacting additively, these different effects appear to interact multiplicatively, with feedbacks among the contributing factors, leading to the surprisingly large increase in the chance of much higher temperatures.”

What to do? It would be nice to say, “Hey, Mother Nature, we’re having a credit crisis, could you take a couple years off?” But as the environmental consultant Rob Watson likes to say, “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics,” and she is going to do whatever they dictate. You can’t sweet talk Mother Nature or the market. You have to change the economics to affect the Dow and the chemistry, biology and physics to affect Mother Nature.

That’s why we need a climate bailout along with our economic bailout. Hal Harvey is the C.E.O. of a new $1 billion foundation, ClimateWorks, set up to accelerate the policy changes that can avoid climate catastrophe by taking climate policies from where they are working the best to the places where they are needed the most.

“There are five policies that can help us win the energy-climate battle, and each has been proven somewhere,” Harvey explained. First, building codes: California’s energy-efficient building and appliance codes now save Californians $6 billion per year,” he said. Second, better vehicle fuel-efficiency standards: “The European Union’s fuel-efficiency fleet average for new cars now stands at 41 miles per gallon, and is rising steadily,” he added.

Third, we need a national renewable portfolio standard, mandating that power utilities produce 15 or 20 percent of their energy from renewables by 2020. Right now, only about half our states have these. “Whenever utilities are required to purchase electricity from renewable sources,” said Harvey, “clean energy booms.” (See Germany’s solar business or Texas’s wind power.)

The fourth is decoupling — the program begun in California that turns the utility business on its head. Under decoupling, power utilities make money by helping homeowners save energy rather than by encouraging them to consume it. “Finally,” said Harvey, “we need a price on carbon.” Polluting the atmosphere can’t be free.

These are the pillars of a climate bailout. Yes, some have upfront costs. But all of them would pay long-term dividends, because they would foster massive U.S. innovation in new clean technologies that would stimulate the real Dow and much lower emissions that would stimulate the Climate Dow.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: March 28, 2009
Source: The New York Times

The Obama administration announced Saturday that it had organized a series of meetings among representatives of 16 countries and the European Union to discuss energy and climate issues.

The meetings, to be held in Washington in April and in La Maddalena, Italy, in July, will seek to resolve longstanding issues that have blocked the development of an international climate treaty.

The participants, who include Chinese and Indian representatives, will also try to create “concrete initiatives and joint ventures that increase the supply of clean energy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a White House news release. The talks, called the Major Economies Meetings on Energy Security and Climate Change, echo in name and goals an initiative begun in the last two years of the Bush administration.

Those meetings gathered developing and developed countries that were the largest emitters of the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. The meetings were cast by the Bush administration as intended to set long-term goals for reducing emissions and to seek actions that could be taken in sectors of economies like power generation and manufacturing.

The talks organized by the Bush administration were criticized by some small developing countries, European officials and environmental groups as an effort to circumvent global climate negotiations led by the United Nations, although President George W. Bush said at the time that the meetings were intended to support the global talks.

The United States refused to ratify an earlier international agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, objecting that developing countries like China and India were not bound by its restrictions on emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Negotiations for a new global treaty are under way and will culminate in talks in Copenhagen in December.

The president of the National Wildlife Federation, Larry Schweiger, said Saturday that any such meetings were useful as ways to seek common ground among the world’s biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases.

At the time, some environmentalists credited the Bush administration’s effort for initiating direct exchanges about climate with China and India.

But Mr. Schweiger said he expected the Obama administration’s initiative to be more productive.

“It’s a matter of intent,” he said. “I think the Bush administration never intended to come up with a big solution. I think this administration is truly committed to finding a solution for everybody.”

By Azlan Othman

Shrinking pristine forests, which bring catastrophe to mankind, came under the spotlight by imams yesterday.

In a Friday sermon, imams said Islam stresses the importance of preserving the environment, which has come under assault.

Humans should not destroy pristine forests and create pollution, they said, adding that Allah dislikes those who bring about destruction to Earth.

Destruction to the environment is now becoming more rampant, perpetrated by irresponsible communities.

Of late, deforestation has resulted in global warming, rise in water level, extinction of species, destruction of natural habitats, and creation of unexpected weather patterns.

Natural disasters threaten mankind, and Brunei is no exception.

With the destruction of forests, continuous heavy downpours cause landslides and flash floods, which lead to big losses, including lives and properties.

“We must be grateful in that such disaster is not as bad in the Sultanate as in other countries,” the imams said.

Scientists have said the drastic loss in the forest, resulting in the imbalance in ecology and the environment, consequently causes natural disasters.

The unsystematic management of forest and the exploitation of greenery for one’s greed while ignoring their side effects were also touched on during the sermon.

The imams said, “The forest is diminishing at a rapid pace. We must be aware that humans cause such destruction and calamity.”

Meanwhile, acknowledging the importance of forest resources to the country’s socio-economy, His Majesty’s Government, through the Forestry Department, has instituted a policy to preserve the lush rainforest, which should continue to be enjoyed by the future generations.

As part of the govenrment’s continuous commitment to enhance public awareness, Brunei Darussalam joined other world communities in observing the World Forestry Day, themed “Forest Prevents Climate Change”, on March 21.

The theme underscored the need to preserve and restore the forest as the best option against climate change and global warming.

The imams, therefore, called on the people to become more aware of the efforts made in upholding the country’s precious resources.

Firm support, they said, is paramount to ensuring the country’s green jewel continues to guarantee the welfare of the people.

The imams concluded by calling on the people to pray to Allah for the country to enjoy peace and prosperity while being continuously protected from natural calamities.

Source: http://www.brunei-online.com/weekend/news/mar28h4.htm

Scarcely a day goes by without another negative media report concerning deforestation (illegal and otherwise) and palm oil plantations.

Forestry Minister Kaban is the man responsible for the expansion of both, and all credit to him; his enthusiastic efforts to ensure both are pursued with the utmost speed are having the catastrophic environmental and humanitarian effects presumably seemingly so desired of by his government.

Does anyone wonder how Kaban can sleep at night knowing as he does that millions of trees and animals have been destroyed during his reign as forestry minister? Indigenous people, no strangers themselves to suffering, are also being deprived of their rights by the very same logging and palm oil industries policed by the Ministry of Forestry.

What is the future for the children of Indonesia? Does no one in government give a damn about them? Will they ever see a rainforest, maybe an orangutan, even a tiger? Not if the Ministry of Forestry carries on doing what it has always done for the environment: destroyed it. It’s the stuff of nightmares unless you are a government minister, whose sleep is hardly likely to be troubled by such thoughts.

Sean Whyte
Chief Executive,
Nature Alert
http://naturealert.blogspot.com/

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/letters/article/14237.html

IMB warns of possible palm oil cargo bills of lading frauds

Saturday, 28 March 2009

THE ICC International Maritime Bureau (IMB) says it has identified a number of suspect shipments of hydrogenated palm oil emanating from Indonesia. The containerised shipments all originate in Jakarta and are purportedly bound for China or the Philippines. Initial enquiries indicated that the containers were all loaded as stated, but it soon became apparent that the boxes in each consignment were destined for discharge at a variety of ports different from those specified in Bills of Lading.

IMB Divisional Director Michael Howlett commented: “These recent cases suggest that potential fraudsters are using an ever-increasing degree of market intelligence to carry out their activities. In these examples, it would appear that someone was actually watching to see which containers were loaded on board certain vessels before attempting to dupe unwitting financiers.”

As part of its investigation, the IMB found that the details as per the Bills of Lading were correct for the cargoes’ pre-carriage into a regional trade hub. But it then discovered that the containers diverged at this point. In one example, 55 containers on one B/L were found to have been despatched to at least 10 separate destinations. Of the 55, only 16 were being transported to the correct discharge port.

The documents complied with the Letter of Credit inasmuch as the cargoes were loaded as stated on the Bills of Lading. However, as these documents were issued by an NVOCC, the Bureau undertook enquiries with the physical carrier and determined the different ports of discharge.

Mr Howlett continued: “It would appear that someone may have initially set up a Letter of Credit for a smaller shipment, then used this information and details about containers on the same vessel to set up a new transaction for a far larger cargo. It is important that banks and trading houses remain vigilant in the face of the growing sophistication of such scams, maintaining levels of due diligence against all documents, even those that on face value look genuine.”

The IMB recommends regular due diligence checks against all customers, old and new, and advises that independent verification be sought on the details of shipments, no matter how legitimate they initially appear.

Source: Maritime Global Net / Hellenic Shipping News

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Prime Minister of Malaysia
Pejabat Perdana Menteri
Pusat Pentadbiran Kerajaan Persekutuan
Bangunan Perdana Putri
62502 Putrajaya, Malaysia
Tel: +603 8888 8000 / 8032
Fax: +603 8888 3444
email: ppm@pmo.gov.my

Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman
Chairman
Human Rights Commission of Malaysia
Level 29, Menara Tun Razak
Jalan Raja Laut
50350 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: +603 2612 5600
Fax: +603 26125620
Email: humanrights@suhakam.org.my

Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud
Chief Minister of Sarawak
Pejabat Ketua Menteri, Tingkat 22,
Wisma Bapa Malaysia,
Petra Jaya,
93502 Kuching, Sarawak
Malaysia
Tel: +082 – 440801
Fax: +082 – 444566
Email: linu@sarawaknet.gov.my

Dear Sirs,

We are gravely concerned and perturbed by the violation of the rights of indigenous groups commonly known as the Dayaks, which has been taking place for almost the past three decades in Sarawak , the largest state in Malaysia.

This is taking the form of a massive land grab through a legal and systematic means of forcing them to give up their ancestral lands or lands over which they have native customary rights (NCR). These lands are supposed to be recognized by the country’s highest courts and the Sarawak Land Code. However, these lands are given away to companies closely connected with State Government leaders, the political elites and cronies.

In April 2008, an International Fact Finding Mission (IFFM) team consisting of members from Centre for Community Economics and Development Consultants Society (CECOEDECON, India) Sustainable Development Foundation (SDF, Thailand) Rainforest Action Network (RAN, United States) visited over 19 communities in Sarawak, consisting of 70 villages and long houses and met with about 825 people from the north to central and south of Sarawak and found that there was continued and systemic organized aggression on indigenous peoples land and rights.

The IFFM established through interviews with the people, through documented evidences provided by the people and through evidences found in the form of graves, fruit trees and cultivated land, that the land areas claimed by the people are native customary rights to land (NCR). Therefore, they have a pre-established right to the land.

The team is of the opinion that since the lands are native customary lands through continuous customary practices of cultivation for generations, the land cannot be taken away from the indigenous peoples by the state government nor be leased out to private companies for plantations. This strategy and action constitutes gross violation of indigenous peoples’ rights to NCR land. They also violate the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

By losing their NCR lands, the indigenous communities lose their farms and the forests where they collect timber for housing and where they go out for hunting and for fishing. Moreover, they continue to suffer on account of the insatiable greed of the politicians in power who clearly show scant regard for human rights as food crops and homes are often bulldozed and the natives left landless and homeless.

Even the law-enforcement agencies, particularly the police, are siding with the plantation companies and are refusing to act when the affected indigenous farmers lodge official complaints against encroachment of their NCR land and the destruction to their crops and properties.

These violations of the rights of indigenous people continue unabated in the face of a deliberate collusion between State Government leaders and large commercial interests and is leading to an extremely dangerous situation. The authorities even deploy the police and the military to make arrests when the natives put up a struggle to defend their ancestral farming lands.

We are therefore extremely concerned at the land grab that is going on in Sarawak as this would lead to serious consequences and implications for the life, livelihood and food sovereignty of the indigenous groups of Sarawak, particularly the Dayak communities.

We strongly support the indigenous people’s struggle to protect their land for their survival.

We demand that the:

1. State Government of Sarawak should uphold the Native Customary Rights (NCR) as guaranteed under the Sarawak Land Code (1958) and recognize the NCR status of all affected parties who can prove the existence of their claim to these rights.
2. State Government of Sarawak should immediately cease the operation of the oil palm plantations in question.
3. State Government of Sarawak should provide protection for the safety of indigenous people against all forms of harassment, intimidation and threats of physical harm that arise from land disputes.
4. Free, fair, prior and informed consent should be obtained from the affected communities before NCR land is requested for commercial development via partnerships with government agencies and/or private sector initiatives.
5. Federal Government of Malaysia shall undertake to revise inconsistent laws in order to abide by Article 5 of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia which enshrines the guarantee of right to life for every inhabitant of its land.
6. State Government of Sarawak shall respect and abide by the case precedent established by the Federal Court of Malaysia’s decision of Madeli Salleh vs Government of Sarawak, which states very clearly that the customary rights of inhabitants were recognized and accepted by the British Crown when it governed Sarawak. It became part of common law and therefore shall be recognized as being a fundamental right.
7. State Government of Sarawak shall cease the issuance of “provisional leases” (PL) for NCR disputed land with immediate effect.
8. Federal Government of Malaysia shall recognize the relevance of all international convenants and instruments on human rights and make haste to ratify and to conform to all these said Charters.

If the State Government of Sarawak fails to comply with the above demands, then the Federal Government of Malaysia must come forward to take appropriate steps to protect NCR lands, the lives and livelihoods of the indigenous people.

Through this letter, I appeal to you to listen to the above demands and look into the struggle of the indigenous peoples in Sarawak.

Sincerely,

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