2012 Ramon Magsaysay Awards: Indonesian leads bold drives to protect forests

MANILA, Philippines - Illegal logging is a complex and serious problem in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation.

This year’s Ramon Magsaysay awardee, environmentalist Ambrosius Ruwindrijarto said greed, corruption, poverty and lawlessness across Indonesia over the past few years have contributed to rampant illegal logging.

“Illegal logging is not simply about the destruction of the forests,” Ruwindrijarto told The New York Times in an earlier interview. “It’s also about the system of corruption and the wealth it creates.”

Ruwindrijarto was recognized by the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation for his sustained advocacy for community-based natural resource management in Indonesia, leading bold campaigns to stop illegal forest exploitation, as well as fresh social enterprise initiatives that engage the forest communities as their full partners.

So grave was the problem that during the 80s and 90s, Indonesia lost 1.5 million hectares of forest each year.

Massive forest destruction led to biodiversity loss, displacement of indigenous populations and catastrophes like landslides and floods, affecting millions of Indonesians.

Indonesia is also the third largest contributor of greenhouse gases in the world.

Growing up, Ruwindrijarto said he was aware of the seriousness of illegal logging in his country and vowed, in his own way, to help solve and curb the problem.

In high school, he organized Telapak, an organization of environment lovers who implemented small projects in wildlife protection and village self-help.

But as he and his friends became more aware of the menace of illegal logging in his country, they decided to tackle it as well.

In 1999, Ruwindrijarto and his Telapak teamed up with the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which specializes in the investigation of environmental crimes, to start an undercover probe of Indonesia’s logging concessions.

“Tracking the timber trade from source to market, the Telepak-EIA investigations uncovered the illicit, transnational operations of timber bosses, brokers and smugglers, in cases involving billions of dollars and the trade in endangered hardwood species,” according to the Magsaysay Foundation.

In his campaign, Ruwindrijarto met influential, moneyed figures behind illegal logging who threatened him with death if he did not stop his investigations.

He recounted a time when he and an EIA representative were jailed, beaten up and threatened with death by a timber company in central Kalimantan. But the harassment did not dampen or change Ruwindrijarto’s resolve to expose illegal loggers.

Fortunately, his crusade paid off when the government took notice.

“Their exposés on the how and who’s who in illegal logging and smuggling sparked public indignation and heightened pressures on Indonesia and other governments to tighten and enforce regulations on timber production and trade. Telapak went on to participate in framing laws and regulations on forest management and timber legality verification and was part of negotiations for an Indonesia-EU treaty on the handling of illegal timber trade,” the foundation said.

Ruwindrijarto did not merely expose people, he also championed sustainable, community-based logging and established community-logging cooperatives that legally and sustainably managed forests in more than 200,000 hectares of forest land, using a method that both conserves forest wealth and benefits the local communities.

Today, after a decade since it partnered with EIA, Telapak has grown into a 247-member organization “engaged in social forestry, marine conservation and indigenous people’s rights.”

It has spearheaded community logging cooperatives and social enterprises that promote ecologically friendly production and marketing of forestry, fishery and agricultural products.

Over the years, Telapak’s programs have changed and improved the lives of people in 33 provinces of Indonesia.

Ruwindrijarto said he never gave up, even in the direst of circumstances when he would fight corrupt and powerful people behind illegal logging in his country.

“Even in the dark days of the anti-logging campaign, we are trying to find hope, some light. We have to work to make it happen.” Ruwindrijarto said.