Forestry
Situation and Challenges
Forests are the lungs of the world and the priceless natural resources of Indonesia. They are the protection against global warming and extreme weather conditions. For this reason, the Government of Indonesia has imposed strict rules to combat illegal logging and to supervise forest products in order to monitor timber movement, and reforestation management plans.

The International community also pays close attention to the source of timbers. Consumers are increasingly demanding any wood materials to be harvested responsibly and sustainably from industrial forests, not natural forests.

The main challenge lies in creating the nation-wide monitoring and verification system to monitor the logging activities and reward responsible practices with verification certificate in order to encourage more sustainable forestry and prevent illegal logging.

Common concerns:

1. Illegal wood harvesting and transportation
2. A difference in reported and actual wood transported
3. Untraceable log history
4. Non-compliance to regulations in major export markets
Partners suggested auto-identification solutions to the government and companies. The solutions are spearheaded by the latest barcode technologies that allow easy identification of timbers and trees. The government develops a barcode management system to tag trees for identification of timber sources, and to tag timbers for harvesting permit, transportation permit, and timber verification.

The process is simple. Companies register their industrial forests to the government and the government issue barcode numbers as identification. These barcodes are to be printed and pasted on each tree. This allows the government as well as the companies to monitor the industrial forests. When the companies want to harvest the trees, they then apply for a permit and receive another set of barcode numbers to be tagged on the harvested timbers. These tags are an identification of the timbers during transportation until the raw wood is turned into beautiful pieces of furniture.

Using the system, forestry officers can verify the transported wood against the permit just by downloading the permit into their portable scanner devices and go on their monitoring duty on the field. The entire system helps prevent frauds, such as false reporting of the type of timber, wrong measurement, and wrong species.

The barcode systems can be used in stages to the level of finished products. Consumers can easily trace the material of every piece of furniture to its original timber, even the place where it was harvested. This acknowledgment is beneficial for the Government as well as companies. Any company that is able to fulfill the formal verification may gain access to the key markets in Europe, US, and Japan. They can easily provide the proof of responsible and environmentally -friendly forestry as the origin of every piece of furniture can be traced to its source.
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