Jakarta, Ekuatorial – A working team tasked to review permits in forestry sector will be announced by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry next week, said Minister Siti Nurbaya on Friday (27/3), in Jakarta.

“We will definitely have to review all permits and set up a working team. We want to do it [reviewing permits] through proper method and evaluation,” said Nurbaya commenting on previous demands from green groups to include permit review on the extended forest moratorium regulation.

The team, she said, will also include civil society organizations aside from foresters.

“It is not easy to be done because we need data and documents availability,” she said. “But, I know that permit review is urgent and it must be done.”

Under a presidential instruction, the moratorium took effect in 2011 and will be expired in May 13, 2015.

Green groups have been pushing President Joko ‘Jokowi’ on his promise to continue forest moratorium and protect remaining natural forests and peatlands which he had stated during his visit in Sei Tohor, Riau, on last November.

If the government had missed its deadline, said activists, at least 4.3 million hectares in the moratorium areas will be deforested.

In addition, deforestation could also hit 12.5 million hectares of primary forest and peatlands, outside of conservation and protected forests.

Up till 2014, 63.8 million out of the total of 93.6 hectares have been included in the moratorium, which consists of 58.9 million hectares of primary forests and 4.9 million hectares of peatlands.

Nevertheless, there’s still 42.8 million hectares of natural forests remain unprotected and potentially will be lost to deforestation.

Minister Nurbaya underlined that the important part was implementation of moratorium.

“It’s about the practice [in the ground] because each time [the ministry] issues permit, we need to see if that areas are include [in the moratorium] or not,” she said adding that all permits will be reviewed regardless of issued before or after implementation of moratorium.

Different from green groups opt for presidential regulation (perpres) rather than presidential instruction (inpres), Minister Nurbaya argued that the current type of regulation was sufficient and strong enough for forest moratorium.

Apart from the permit review team, the ministry also planned on establishing an independent directory board which will be ‘supervising and controlling’ on programs related to climate change.

“It will be filled with people from the ministry, experts, and from Norway as this is a part of our agreement with Norway,” she said referring to Indonesia and Norway agreement on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation or REDD. Fidelis E Satriastanti

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