Jakarta 31 October 2018- Forestival is an active peoples forum who was initiated by the SETAPAK program to push for forest and land management, through open public information, law enforcement, gender based approach, natural resources policies, and continuous budgeting and finance to ensure several initiatives and challenges in making sure there is a fair and continuous management of natural resources.
The Importance of Law Enforcement to Save Natural Resources
Indonesia is a country rich in natural resources and contributes highly in pushing the economy and increase the country income, especially in the forestry, garden, and mining sector. But threats to these sources of livelihood for people keep happening. The result is people are losing their livelihoods from the forest, and conflicts arise between people and land based industry organizations. There is a deviation in natural resources management, more so with the lack of regulation and law enforcement by officials in the state and national level adds problems in realizing fair and continuous forest and land management, there needs to be a concrete effort by the government to deal with conflict by applying policies that dictates the proper use of land and forest areas, also strict action against offenders who damage the forest and land.
Besides regulation made by the government and strict law enforcement, collaboration with the people to monitor and report offenses in their area becomes an important aspect in realizing transformation in law enforcement in the natural resources sector.
To talk about the challenges, initiative, and transformation of law enforcement in natural resources, during Forestival 4 day 2 there are Sukma Violetta, S.H., LL.M as the Vice Chairman of the Judicial Commission of Indonesia and Indro Sugianto, S.H., M.h., as the Commissioner of the Attorney Commission of Indonesia to discuss with CSO’s from 14 provinces in Indonesia. This discussion is meant to talk about complaints, monitoring, and surveillance of natural resources cases in a number of regions and how to take action against it.
In its implementation, the SETAPAK program with the people, makes an effort to monitor and investigate together between CSO and law enforcement in the regional and national level, using data and information to accelerate law enforcement for natural resources, collaborating with CSO and law enforcement in monitoring case reporting, together with the local region government in initiating case closure or tenurial conflict, push for the creation of regional laws, and evaluate laws in the national level in relation to natural resources management.
Since 2016 to 2018 there was 33 complaints filed by the people from a number of provinces; to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) to 128 companies in the land industry who were violators.
To push for law enforcement, SETAPAK partners requested information in which if not given the partners will claim an information dispute, next is analyzing documents and cross reference with the law, the partners will then work together with the government and law enforcement agency to monitor permits, and for the closing partners of SETAPAK 2 will push for suspension, downsizing, or removal of permits if it fails to follow the litigation process for law enforcement.
In practice, realizing transformation in the natural resources law enforcement sector requires commitment Apgakum, monitoring system, socialized reporting and well monitored, strengthen witness protection for environmental experts, as well as transparency in permit data and violations done by the land based industry.
Besides doing the Forestival 4 discussion with the theme “Transformation in Realizing Law Enforcement in the Natural Resources Sector”, the agenda of today’s Forestival 4 is to visit several ministries like Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning, Ministry of Energy and Resources, Ministry of Economic planning. Forestival 4, will be close on 1 November 2018 by showcasing the ideas from the SETAPAK program and showcase achievements from Forestival 4
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About the SETAPAK Program
Since its inception in 2011 with the support of the UK Climate Change Unit (UKCCU), the Save the forest and land through repairs with management program (SETAPAK) The Asia Foundation believes that management of forestry and land is the key to build a sustainable forest sector that can spread the wealth among the people near the forest and conserving the environment. Besides decreasing gas emission to mitigate global warming, this program helps to decentralize forest and land management in Indonesia to ensure transparency and accountability in managin, protecting, and distributing the benefits of natural resources to reach a fair and equal economic growth.
For further info, please contact:
Ika Fitriyanti
PR Consultant
Fortune PR
T:+628128128793
Fadila Ayu Hapsari
Program Officer
SETAPAK II Program
T:+62 811 916 3777