Court decision upsets plantation companies

(GAPKI)

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/03/03/court-decision-upsets-plantation-companies.html

Court decision upsets plantation companies
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 03/03/2012 7:35 PM
A | A | A |

The Constitutional Court’s recent decision to approve a request from a number of local governments to change an article in the Forestry Law has raised uncertainties over the legal status of land owned by plantation companies and forest concession owners.

The chairman of the Indonesian Forestry Businessmen Association (APHI), Nanang Rofandi, said in Jakarta on Friday that with the court’s decision, the association’s members felt that the status of their land had become uncertain.

“The ruling raises a lot of questions and confusion among us and we now have no certainty in carrying out our business,” Nanang told The Jakarta Post.

On Feb. 21, the court issued a ruling to drop the phrase “allocated and/or”, which appears in the third paragraph of the Forestry Law’s first article, at the request of regents from five regencies in Central Kalimantan on the ground that the phrase made the article contrary to the 1945 Constitution.

The regents also argued that the full sentence, which reads: “A forested area is a certain area that is ‘allocated and/or’ determined by the government as a permanent forest area”, gave an absolute authority to the central government to declare some of their areas as permanent forests.

With the original article, the plaintiff said, the central government had the power to determine non-forest areas, which are already owned by local people, to become forest areas. But legal experts say that the removal of the phrase could lend even more power to the government in determining forest areas.

Legal expert Hikmahanto Juwana, who is also the dean of the University of Indonesia’s Law Faculty, said the deletion of the phrase did not really change the meaning because there was no explanation on the legal implication of the change.

“When we talk about the government, which government are we talking about? The word ‘government’ is misleading because it can mean the central government or the local government,” Hikmahanto told the Post.

He said that both central and local governments should sit together and discuss further about the forestry issue. He also said that the ruling still needed to make an explanation in order to make everything clear.

“We discussed this issue at the Forestry Ministry today. We want them to issue circulars that will help us to retain legality in our business,” he said.

In line with the APHI, the Indonesian Palm Oil Producers’ Association (GAPKI) also said that the legality of palm oil business activity in Indonesia has become unclear following the courts’ decision.

“The ruling brings a lot of problems. We are going to consult with legal experts about this issue in order to get some clarity for our business,” GAPKI’s executive director, Fadhil Hasan, told the Post.

In a separate interview, Greenomics Indonesia executive director Elfian Effendi said that all the Forestry Ministry’s decrees on provincial forestry area allocations issued after Sept. 30, 1999, no longer had a legal base as one of the reasons why the court decided to change the article was because it contravened the Constitution.

Elfian added that the court’s ruling also effectively delegitimized the presidential decrees on new permits and prime forest management, and the forest spatial management plan (RTRW) in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi by removing their legal foundation.

“This is because the RTRW uses map attachments from a ministerial decree that was issued after Sept. 30, 1999,” he said.

In addition, Greenomics said the ruling would also affect the Master Plan for the Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesia’s Economic Development (MP3EI) because some of the economic programs included in the MP3EI were based on ministerial decrees issued after Sept. 30, 1999, when the Forestry Law became effective.

In a separate interview, Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said that the ruling did not disadvantage any party, including businesspeople.

“There is no party that is disadvantaged by the ruling,” Zulkifli told the Post.

He said the ruling benefited the government because it could help speed up the program to establish forest boundaries in the country. “This will strengthen efforts in establishing the forest land-use plan [TGHK],” he said.

The minister added that the TGHK was very important for Indonesia as the country possessed some 95 million hectares of forested land — the largest amount in Southeast Asia — and played an important role in the global fight against climate change and reducing gas emissions.

In addition, he said he had urged all regents across the country to make an extra effort to accelerate the establishment of forest boundary areas in their respective regions. He gave local governments three months to complete the task.

According to Tahrir Fathoni, the ministry’s human resources development chief, the ministry has requested assistance from consultants and academics to help accelerate the task.

Tahrir said the ministry had outsourced more than 1,000 people to get the job done.

Normally, it takes a full year to obtain the results of a boundary area. (nfo)