Forestry and the Job Creation Bill
What the Job Creation Bill will answer may need to pay attention to the balance of natural use or empathy for the poor. In other words, efforts to create jobs and sustainable exploitation of nature, cannot be separated.
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Jungle tracking participants discuss the forest ecosystem during the 2019 National Jamboree for Nature Conservation at the Muka Kuning Nature Tourism Park, in Batam, Riau Islands, on June 8, 2019
When all is said and done, conservation is actually about humans, namely about the balance that must be reached between humans and nature. It must meet the needs of the poor and deprived people, who ironically share their rural areas with the biological wealth of the earth (Wright, 1988).
What the Job Creation Bill will answer may need to pay attention to the balance of natural use or empathy for the poor as mentioned by Maurice Wright. In other words, efforts to create jobs and sustainable exploitation of nature -- in this case forests, including their various impacts -- cannot be separated.
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Substantially, the effort to create employment is a derivative or impact of the management and utilization of forest resources. It cannot be realized if forest management cannot be done wisely and sustainably.
That means that issuing the articles of Law No. 41 of 1999 concerning forestry into the Job Creation Bill only with a focus on one thing, namely the speed and ease of investment, needs to be done very carefully because it has the potential to wholly undermine both forestry and employment.
Weaknesses and risks
This article tries only to look at the weaknesses and risks of the Job Creation Bill (draft dated 13/2/2020) associated with the Forestry Law with the purpose of obtaining points that need further scrutiny as follows. First, the content of the Job Creation Bill tends to weaken the content or limit changes to the Forestry Law that will be carried out through the national legislation program this year. In the Job Creation Bill there are no definitions regarding forests, forest areas, production forests, protected forests, and other topics.
It is estimated that the definition follows the definition in the Forestry Law. Therefore, changes to the Forestry Law cannot be carried out fundamentally because they are bound to the definitions in the Job Creation Bill. In fact, in order to adjust to field conditions and estimation of the conditions for the next 15 to 20 years, in the revision of the Forestry Law it is time to make an adjustment to the definitions.
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Second is the injustice in the utilization of forest products. The Job Creation Bill removes licenses for individuals and community groups in the form of cooperatives. That means the Job Creation Bill does not follow Article 5 of the Forestry Law, which mentions that there are state forests and private forests, and in the explanation of the articles there is a division of customary forests, village forests, community forests, and inhabitant forests.
Therefore, in the Job Creation Bill, business licenses in forestry do not include local and customary communities. In this regard, Article 27 and Article 29 of the Forestry Law on governing special licenses for individuals and cooperatives are revoked.
Wooden houses are seen at Giam Siak Kecil Biosfer and Bukit Batu Conservation Forest. Illegal logging at the conservation forest is more widespread than earlier thought. Photo taken on (6/2/2018) .
Access to forest resources for cooperatives and village-owned enterprises, based on the Job Creation Bill, can only be done by cooperating with large businesses, namely state-owned enterprises (BUMN), regionally-owned enterprises (BUMD), and private entities that can get business licenses.
Does this mean that the revision of the Forestry Law will be closed to open access to forest benefits for local and customary communities? If so, it means that the content of the Job Creation Bill does not only have the aim of accelerating licensing for local and customary communities, but will even close all social forestry licenses that are currently applicable.
Third, there is no legal norm in the Job Creation Bill that must be upheld to translate the content of the law into a more operational regulation. For example, for changes to Article 15 (3) of the Forestry Law it is said that the central government prioritizes the establishment of forest areas in strategic areas, which will be regulated further by government regulations.
There is no explanation regarding "strategic areas", whether strategic to invest, for example in the form of conflict-free areas or areas with infrastructure that are already prepared.
What needs to be taken into consideration is why the determination of state forest areas for license holders is slow due to, among other reasons, the low incentives for permit holders to complete them. That is because without the determination of the forest areas, licenses can still be used and be extended.
On the other hand, the absence of a program for determining the forest areas outside state forest areas, such as customary forests, could be the cause of conflicts that could interfere with investment.
Likewise in the amendment to Article 15 (6), it is mentioned that in the case of an overlap between forest areas and spatial plans, licenses and/or land rights, the settlement of the overlap in question is regulated by a Presidential Regulation (Perpres). The basic norms of settlement should be stated in the Job Creation Bill.
This is important, for example, to ensure when the overlapping area must be maintained as a forest area, when it can be converted so that the overlapping solution gets a solution. Besides that, norms are needed to implement solutions to the locations of the licenses where land tenure is included, including millions of hectares of oil palm plantations and mines within the forest area, because Presidential Regulation No. 88/2017 concerning settlement of land acquisition in forest areas does not resolve the issue.
However, efforts to settle the overlapping also need to be linked to forest functions that must be maintained to support the carrying capacity of the environment. For this reason, the amendment to Article 18 (1) of the Forestry Law, which states that the central government determines and maintains adequate forest area coverage and forest cover for each watershed and/or islands, needs to be clarified.
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A dam that was built by state oil and gas company Pertamina is seen at the Wain River Conservation Forest in Karang Joang subdistrict, Balikpapan district, Balikpapan City, East Kalimantan, on Aug. 30, 2019. The dam accommodates water from the branches of the Wain River. The Wain River Conservation Forest covers an area of 11,000 hectares and functions as a water catchment area for the Balikpapan people\'s drinking water supply and Pertamina\'s oil processing.
Weakening
Fourth is the potential for the weakening of governance. In the amendment to Article 19 (1) of the Forestry Law, changes in the allocation and function of forest areas are determined by the central government by taking into account the results of integrated research. In this case, the approval by the House of Representatives (DPR) for changes has a significant impact and the broad scope and strategic value as stipulated in the Forestry Law is removed, maybe with the intention to speed up the process. What needs to be maintained later is to strengthen the results of the integrated research.
However, the Job Creation Bill does not confirm what the criteria of the integrated research are or the processes and results of work that should be open to the public. Moreover, in its implementation it needs to be linked to the carrying capacity for a wider landscape so that the amendment to Article 19 needs to be related to the amendment to Article 18, namely regarding forest areas that must be maintained.
Fifth is the centralization of forest protection. In the amendment to Article 48 (2) of the Forestry Law, forest protection in state forests is carried out by the central government.
Taking into account the current conditions in the field, the direction of forest protection should be carried out by involving as many parties as possible through increasing the sense of belonging. From field experience, forest protection can no longer only use the command and control approach. In this case, community rights over forests by utilizing their functions, which are the incentives for protection, need to be developed.
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Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto (center left), accompanied by House of Representatives (DPR) Speaker Puan Maharani (center right), meets the press after a closed-door meeting on Wednesday (12/2/2020) at the Senayan legislative complex, Jakarta. The pair, accompaniedby several other Cabinet members, presented the President\'s Letter on the omnibus bill on job creation, which was delivered to the House on Feb. 12.
Sixth is the potential for the weakening of law enforcement. In the amendment to Article 49 of the Forestry Law it is said that the holders of the rights or business licenses are required to make efforts to prevent and control forest fires in their work areas. In Article 49 of the existing law, it is stated that the holders of the rights or licenses are responsible for forest fires in the work areas. The content of the amendment to Article 49 has the potential to weaken law enforcement efforts due to forest fires by corporations.
The same thing is also found in the amendment to Article 50 of the Forestry Law. In this article there are two different meanings, namely in Paragraph (1), where it says "everyone who is granted a business license", while in Paragraph (2) it is only referred to as "everyone".
That means in the substance of the article, if it is only called "every person", it means that it is an individual and not a permit holder. Such a matter has consequences on the definition of the amendment to Article 78 of the Forestry Law, which states, "Anyone who intentionally violates the regulations is threatened with imprisonment […]". Therefore, what is meant by everyone is not the business permit holder, right? That means, it tries to free the license holders from criminal threats.
Observing the six reviews, it appears that the content of the Job Creation Bill, although normatively can provide convenience for investors, at the same time has the potential to increase injustice, uncertainty in the implementation, potentially worsening governance and weakening forest protection or law enforcement. "In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics," said the United States Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974).
Hariadi Kartodihardjo, Professor of Forestry Policy, IPB University.
The phrase should be the basis to increasingly maintain carefulness in the determination of the Job Creation Law so that the presence of investment and the magnitude of employment opportunities is also a source of a standard value of forestry motto: Prosperous Communities, Sustainable Forests.
Hariadi Kartodihardjo, Professor of Forestry Policy, IPB University.
