Corruption & Ineptitude Have Cost Indonesia At Least $7 Billion In Forestry Industry 2007-11
Corruption and mismanagement in Indonesia’s forest sector have cost the government billions of dollars in losses in recent years, including over $7 billion in losses from 2007-2011, Human Rights Watch said in a report released yesterday. The report also blasted the country’s “green growth” strategy, saying that despite recent reforms, Indonesia’s forestry policies as they are implemented today continue to allow widespread forest clearing and threaten the rights and livelihoods of forest-dependent communities.
“The Indonesian government has been selling the expansion of its forestry sector as an example of sustainable ‘green growth’ and an antidote to climate change and poverty, but the evidence suggests otherwise,” Joe Saunders, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch, said in a release to the media.
“Funds that could be used to improve public welfare are being siphoned off to enrich a handful of people or needlessly lost through mismanagement. And the regional smog crisis suggests the environment and rural livelihoods are the victims, not the beneficiaries, of the government’s forest policies.”
Mismanagement in Indonesia’s forestry sector has serious consequences for human rights and the environment, noted Human Rights Watch in the 61-page report, “The Dark Side of Green Growth: Human Rights Impacts of Weak Governance in Indonesia’s Forestry Sector.” Indonesia is one of the world’s top carbon emitters, largely due to the clearing of forests for agriculture, and increased pressure on land for the expansion of oil palm and pulp plantations has caused violent conflicts to erupt between companies and local communities who believe they have not been adequately compensated for their land.
EDIT
http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0717-hrw-dark-side-of-green-growth.html