By: Masayu Yulien Vinanda and Israr Ardiansyah

Jakarta (12/01)-Five forest concessions located in Kalimantan signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with The Borneo Initiative (TBI) on Tuesday (12/01) as an important step to achieve Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)’s sustainable forest management certification.
TBI’s Executive Member of The Board Jesse Kuijper and Representative for Indonesia Rizal Bukhari led the MoU signing ceremony which took place in Mandarin Oriental Hotel Jakarta. WWF-Indonesia Supervisory Board member Tati Darsoyo, all five concessionaires, and numbers of forest experts attended the event.
Those five concessions signing the MoU were PT. Roda Mas, PT. Sarang Sapta Putera, PT. Belayan River Timber, PT. Suka Jaya Makmur, and PT. Sarmiento Parakanca Timber. The participation is a new chapter of the agreement between Dutch NGO The Borneo Initiative (TBI) and WWF-Indonesia in August 2009 to cooperate in eliminating illegal logging and accelerating sustainable forest management in Kalimantan through forest certification programme.
According to Rizal Bukhari, WWF-Indonesia forest expert delegated to become TBI representative in Indonesia, The MoU between those five concessions with TBI is a significant achievement for Borneo forest certification efforts.

“Those five concessions basically have things in common. Besides they are all located in Borneo and cover an area of 600,000 hectares, they also have strong commitment toward Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) certification,” Rizal said.
Meanwhile, Jesse Kuijper said that the efforts toward sustainable forest management in Borneo focused on three aspects, “First, TBI will give financial support for certification bodies and conducting social and environmental projects. Secondly, TBI builds group of people who want to share knowledge certification, and there will be also lesson-learned from the certified companies. Lastly. We are linking the market. We offer a promising sustainable timber market in Europe.”
Jesse added, TBI’s programs are carried on based on the research they had conducted for the last 2 years in Kalimantan which proved that the most serious obstacles faced by the concessions in achieving FSC are human resources and financial support.
After the MoU signing, Executive Director of PT. Belayan River Timber Untung Iskandar expressed his satisfaction regarding this initiative.

“Previously, our biggest obstacles in achieving FSC certificate are lack of human resources and financial support. We have put our effort for 12 -13 years for achieving FSC. So, we hail this initiative. This has been our dream, that in the future, forest certification will be adopted by all concessions,” Untung said.
Those respective concessions as TBI pioneer partners are expected to become role model for other concessions in the efforts to achieve sustainable forest management. TBI targeted that on 2013, one million hectares certified concessions will be developed to 3,3 million hectares and in 2015 Borneo certified forest will attain an area of five million hectares.
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