| SAN FRANCISCO, CA - August 19 - On Tuesday, August 5, a new shipment of old growth, tropical hardwood from Indonesia labeled “RIL verified” slipped virtually unnoticed into the United States through the port of Hampton Roads in Norfolk, Virginia. The wood arrived as part of a reduced-impact logging (RIL) pilot program, a partnership between U.S. corporate interests, USAID and Indonesian timber barons, and is the latest marketing ploy to greenwash the sale of lauan, an endangered Indonesian hardwood also marketed as meranti, in the U.S. Rainforest Action Network and allies support Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri’s May 13, 2002 call for a moratorium on logging in Indonesia until processes are put in place to protect endangered rainforests and secure the rights of indigenous people to their ancestral homelands.
“U.S. ports should be closed to Indonesian wood until their rainforests are protected and human rights are respected. The so-called stump-to-store RIL certification program is little more than an elaborate means by which to systematically document the destruction of Earth’s remaining old growth rainforests. You can’t save endangered rainforests by logging them, selectively or otherwise,” said Jennifer Krill, Old Growth Campaigns Director, Rainforest Action Network.
Documents released by the RIL pilot program partnership indicate that the August 5 shipment was logged from PT Suka Jaya Makmur, a cut-block nearly twice the size permitted under a 1999 Indonesian law. The holding company, Alas Kusuma Group, has documented ties with the former dictator’s regime and his timber cartel, many of which remain major players in the country’s corrupt timber trade. The RIL program does not require PT Suka Jaya Makmur to either protect endangered forests within its concession, or to ensure prior and informed consent of local communities before logging their ancestral land.
Rather than foster sustainable forestry by restricting logging to plantations and secondary forests, the Indonesian Ministry of Forests looks the other way when ‘legal’ loggers cut outside their concessions and mills accept undocumented lumber from timber bandits. In October, the RIL pilot program is scheduled to begin its second phase by attempting to convince retailers to further confuse and deceive American consumers into buying tropical hardwood from old growth forests that should be permanently protected. RAN has called on American purchasers such as Home Depot and Georgia-Pacific to stop buying wood products from Indonesia until both endangered forests and human rights there are protected.
President Bush referred to ‘reduced-impact logging’ in his “Initiative Against Illegal Logging” released on July 29, just one week before the first shipment from Indonesia arrived in Norfolk. Earlier this year, Rainforest Action Network released the report, “Importing Destruction” documenting how U.S. imports of Indonesia’s tropical hardwoods are devastating indigenous communities and ancient forests.
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