En ny tømmer-handelsaftale gør langt fra nok for at bekæmpe ulovlig skovhugst, der har store konsekvenser for lokalsamfundene og den sårbare regnskov, advarer Human Rights Watch – menneskeretsvagthunden peger samtidig på enorme skatteunddragelser fra tømmerbaronerne.
JAKARTA, 7 november 2013 (HRW): The agreement requires Indonesian timber exported to the EU to carry a certificate showing it was harvested legally, but does not address whether harvesting the timber violated local community rights.
Nor does it address corruption in the issuance of timber licenses, which robs Indonesia of billions of dollars in revenues (indtægter fra afgifter) annually, Human Rights Watch said Thursday
“The EU-Indonesia timber trade agreement should help combat illegal logging, but there is still a long road ahead before either side can claim to trade only in legal timber,” said Joe Saunders, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch, adding:
“Indonesia’s certification process needs to be reformed to ensure that timber is not taken from community lands without consent (samtykke) and adequate compensation.”
Using industry and government production data, Human Rights Watch also calculates that Indonesia lost at least 2 billion US dollar (ca. 11. milliarder DKR) in uncollected taxes due to illegal logging and unacknowledged subsidies in 2011, a year after the timber legality system became mandatory (obligatorisk) for all operators.
On November 7, 2013, Human Rights Watch released the Indonesian language version of its report “The Dark Side of Green Growth: Human Rights Impacts of Weak Governance in Indonesia’s Forestry Sector,” and formally submitted the report to Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in Jakarta.
One finding is that Indonesia’s new timber legality certification system, incorporated into the EU-Indonesia trade agreement, is inadequate (utilstrækkelig) to address the pervasive (omsiggribende) land rights violations and corruption that have plagued the forestry sector.
Indonesia’s forests are globally important for their biodiversity and for their role as global carbon sinks (optager CO2), yet are being lost at an alarming rate. Illegality is a critical driver of this deforestation.
