Timber legality verification system and the Voluntary Partnership Agreement in Indonesia
Timber legality verification system and the Voluntary Partnership Agreement in Indonesia

Author: Krystof Obidzinski

Publisher: CIFOR

Published: 2014-12-29

Total Pages: 59

ISBN-13: 6021504682

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In September 2013, Indonesia officially signed a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) to guarantee the legality of all timber products exported to the EU. Under the Indonesian VPA, a timber legality assurance system known as SVLK (Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu) has already been developed and has been in effect since 1 January 2013 for woodworking, wood panels, and pulp and paper. When the VPA is fully implemented, SVLK will become FLEGT legality license and will meet European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR) requirements for legal timber. The objective of this paper is to analyze the challenges of implementing SVLK in the small-scale forestry sector of Indonesia. The paper also assesses whether a mandatory approach to legality verification will be more effective in terms of assuring legality than voluntary approaches, such as certification. The analysis involved desk-based analysis of government statistics, policy documents, key stakeholder interviews, and field surveys in three major timber-producing provinces of Indonesia — Central Java, East Kalimantan and Papua. The paper discusses a number of challenges facing the implementation of SVLK, among others the cost of timber legality verification, limited societal awareness of SVLK, business legality issues among small-scale enterprises, and high levels of illegality in their timber supply chains. The paper closes by presenting a detailed set of policy options to address the observed challenges.

Timber legality verification and small-scale forestry enterprises in Indonesia
Timber legality verification and small-scale forestry enterprises in Indonesia

Author: Krystof Obidzinski

Publisher: CIFOR

Published: 2014-07-17

Total Pages: 8

ISBN-13:

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The Indonesian Timber Legality Verification System (SVLK) is the cornerstone of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement between Indonesia and the European Commission, which offers opportunities for Indonesian timber producers to benefit from increased market access to a major eco-sensitive market. Significant progress has been made in the application of SVLK standards among large forestry enterprises and the prospects are good that full compliance can be achieved in the large-scale sector by the end of 2014.

Realising REDD+
Realising REDD+

Author: Arild Angelsen

Publisher: CIFOR

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 6028693030

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REDD+ must be transformational. REDD+ requires broad institutional and governance reforms, such as tenure, decentralisation, and corruption control. These reforms will enable departures from business as usual, and involve communities and forest users in making and implementing policies that a ect them. Policies must go beyond forestry. REDD+ strategies must include policies outside the forestry sector narrowly de ned, such as agriculture and energy, and better coordinate across sectors to deal with non-forest drivers of deforestation and degradation. Performance-based payments are key, yet limited. Payments based on performance directly incentivise and compensate forest owners and users. But schemes such as payments for environmental services (PES) depend on conditions, such as secure tenure, solid carbon data and transparent governance, that are often lacking and take time to change. This constraint reinforces the need for broad institutional and policy reforms. We must learn from the past. Many approaches to REDD+ now being considered are similar to previous e orts to conserve and better manage forests, often with limited success. Taking on board lessons learned from past experience will improve the prospects of REDD+ e ectiveness. National circumstances and uncertainty must be factored in. Di erent country contexts will create a variety of REDD+ models with di erent institutional and policy mixes. Uncertainties about the shape of the future global REDD+ system, national readiness and political consensus require  exibility and a phased approach to REDD+ implementation.

The Army and the Indonesian Genocide
The Army and the Indonesian Genocide

Author: Jess Melvin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-01-19

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1351273302

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For the past half century, the Indonesian military has depicted the 1965-66 killings, which resulted in the murder of approximately one million unarmed civilians, as the outcome of a spontaneous uprising. This formulation not only denied military agency behind the killings, it also denied that the killings could ever be understood as a centralised, nation-wide campaign. Using documents from the former Indonesian Intelligence Agency’s archives in Banda Aceh this book shatters the Indonesian government’s official propaganda account of the mass killings and proves the military’s agency behind those events. This book tells the story of the 3,000 pages of top-secret documents that comprise the Indonesian genocide files. Drawing upon these orders and records, along with the previously unheard stories of 70 survivors, perpetrators, and other eyewitness of the genocide in Aceh province it reconstructs, for the first time, a detailed narrative of the killings using the military’s own accounts of these events. This book makes the case that the 1965-66 killings can be understood as a case of genocide, as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The first book to reconstruct a detailed narrative of the genocide using the army’s own records of these events, it will be of interest to students and academics in the field of Southeast Asian Studies, History, Politics, the Cold War, Political Violence and Comparative Genocide.

International Forest Policies in Indonesia: International Influences, Power Changes and Domestic Responses in REDD+, One Map and Forest Certification Politics
International Forest Policies in Indonesia: International Influences, Power Changes and Domestic Responses in REDD+, One Map and Forest Certification Politics

Author: Agung Wibowo

Publisher: Cuvillier Verlag

Published: 2016-01-07

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 373698183X

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The political contention that considers forests to be mere economic assets to achieve state welfare has slowly changed into a more conservative view since the Ninth World Forestry Congress in Mexico in 1985 rightly acknowledged that there has been severe tropical forest destruction and environmental deterioration around the globe.

The context of REDD+ in Indonesia: Drivers, agents and institutions
The context of REDD+ in Indonesia: Drivers, agents and institutions

Author: Giorgio Budi Indrarto

Publisher: CIFOR

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13:

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This country profile reviews the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in Indonesia, sets out the institutional, political and economic environment within which REDD+ is being implemented in Indonesia, and documents the process of national REDD+ policy development during the period 2007 – early 2012. While Indonesia is committed at the national and international level to addressing climate change through the forestry sector, there are clearly contextual challenges that need to be addressed to create the enabling conditions for REDD+. Some of the major issues include inconsistent legal frameworks, sectoral focus, unclear tenure, consequences of decentralisation, and weak local governance. Despite these challenges, however, REDD+ opens up an opportunity for improvements in forest governance and, more broadly, in land use governance. More democratic political-economic processes in general, greater freedom of civil society and the press, and heightened awareness of environmental issues can help build support and solidify policies in this direction.

Land-based investment and green development in Indonesia
Land-based investment and green development in Indonesia

Author: Anne Casson

Publisher: CIFOR

Published: 2015-04-10

Total Pages: 65

ISBN-13: 6021504844

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Growing global concern about the environmental costs of economic development resulting from natural resource extraction has sparked interest in a new economic paradigm known as ‘green development’. Indonesia is currently experimenting with the ‘green development’ paradigm and trying to define its meaning and better understand its potential applications. So far, this process has meant a refinement and realignment of existing policy measures that seek to reduce deforestation and GHG emissions. These regulations often face contradictory economic development strategies.

Lessons from voluntary partnership agreements for REDD+ benefit sharing
Lessons from voluntary partnership agreements for REDD+ benefit sharing

Author: Cecilia Luttrell

Publisher: CIFOR

Published: 2015-09-17

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13: 6023870082

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The experience of FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreements offer several lessons on how to design benefit sharing mechanisms under REDD+ so that they build credibility and trust among the potential recipients of REDD+ benefits. This paper focuses on lessons for three specific design aspects of REDD+ benefit-sharing mechanisms: (i) the balance between state and non-state actors in the architecture of benefit-sharing mechanism institutions; (ii) the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in monitoring; and (iii) the design of multistakeholder processes. The choice and arrangement of institutions and actors is crucial for credibility: independence can be enhanced or reduced by the architecture of check and balance mechanisms and the type of actors involved. Lessons from VPAs also highlight the trade-off between the cost efficiency and capacity building gains of using existing (often state) institutions and actors versus the potential increased effectiveness and independence that may be provided by new and/or non-state institutions and actors. The use of civil society monitors and multistakeholder processes can provide credibility through enhancing accountability and transparency as well as increasing commitment and confidence in the system. The impact of civil society monitoring can be enhanced by formal recognition of its role, establishing complaints mechanisms and formalizing access to information. Multistakeholder processes can be strengthened by clarifying roles, responsibilities and decision-making mandates of the process; clarifying who should be included; accepting that such processes take time; and maintaining technical and financial support.