Press Release: Consortium for Supporting Community-based Forest Management System (KpSHK)

RATTANATION

Rattan as Trading Commodity and Friendship Symbol

Traditional Indonesia proverb,”Tiada rotan akar pun jadi” (If there’s no rattan, let use of roots), clearly mark rattan as a rare and expensive commodity. This unique tropical forest vegetation is well-known for its strong and elastic characteristic that it’s commonly used as furniture material, like in rattan mats and rattan chair, and even as custom law enforcement, commonly using a rattan whip.

History even recorded that since ancient times, rattan had already become a global trading commodity. Call it, the givings of “sepikul rotan” (a basket full of rattan) in the period of Srivijayan empire as a sign of friendship to a kingdom in India, “rattan armor” which is famous throughout the world from the Majapahit-China relations, and the givings of “white rattan cane” from the Sumatran Peninsula empires (Pasai) to Islamic-Indian empire as a sign of mutual relationship.

Rattan Habitats in Indonesia

Indonesia tropical rainforests, that spread widely on Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku and Papua, are well suitable habitat for rattan growth. Forest canopy obviously supports rattan by allowing it to ramp on trees and keeping the forest floor humid. Those mutualism made rattan greatly feasible as a prime commodity in non-wood forest products from Indonesia.

As an excellent commodity, it’s clearly make sense if people living in the outskirt of the forest depend their life on rattan as farmers or collectors. According to KpSHK data, there are currently 80 million or more Indonesian people who depend on rattan as their source of living, excluding crafters who commonly live in Java.

Indonesia Rattan Business Polemic

Since 1979, Indonesia had become an influential exporter of rattan. Moreover, this country are actually capable of producing 696.000 tones of rattan that year (equivalent to 82% of world needs). Unfortunately, unconcerned government finally made up many unsolvable problems regarding this commodity. Examples are incoherent export regulations, overlapping authority over sectors, trade monopolies, overstock, and low quality products.

As an effect, every year production of Indonesia rattan is decreasing significantly (refer to below table).

Source: Directorate General of Forestry Production Development; Directorate General of Land Rehabilitation and Social Forestry; Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation.

Up to the era of 80s, rattan is still a primadonna in non-wood forest export commodity. This commodity is also a subject of interest for both hadicrafts and furniture association. While rattan is in its peak, government strangely legalized monopoly in  rattan market by electing a sole export agent for rattan. Later on, this monopoly results in rattan weakening position and great loss over many parties, including rattan farmers and crafters.

In the era of reformation, government tries to fix its mistake by stopping the monopolistic rattan export. As an effect, in 2005, about 3,000 rattan farmers who are members of P3R (Association for Rattan Farmers and Craftsmen) Kedang Pahu-West Kutai, East Kalimantan, complained due to the unavailability of manufacturers in Java to absorb most of their raw rattan productions.

In response to the complaint, the endorsement of Minister of Trade Regulation (Permendag) No. 12/2005 reopens the rattan export but with 77,000 tones quota. This leads to more catastrophe, as in 2009, crafters (industrial and household scale manufacturing) in Java experienced scarcity of raw rattan from Sulawesi and Kalimantan. This leads to revision of Permendag to No. 36/2009 which stated quota of 35,000 tones with priority provisions to domestic needs. An estimated of 60% handicraft industries were closed down due to this endless polemic, while 600,000 workers, most of whom are women, actually depend on these national craft industries.

If the rattan sector condition keeps getting worse and there is still no change in regulations, national rattan players predicted that “rattan armageddon”, all national rattan industries stop operating, will happen in the upcoming 2011.

CAFTA and Rattan Business Sustainability

Rattan problems don’t stop at export policies. Competition with imported furniture made of “china white rattan” (read: plastics) is obviously threatening, whilst the endorsement of CAFTA increase the danger. The price of plastics from the bamboo nation, which is considerably far more affordable than rattan, and ineffective rattan cultivation practices in farmers society made it harder for rattan to compete in the market.

As an image, raw rattan from farmers now worth as little as Rp 600.00/kg (about 0.7 USD), down from Rp 1,200.00/kg (about 1.3 USD). As a result, farmers get bored of conserving forests inhabited with rattan.  One pragmatic choice for them is to sell the wood log, as rattan is getting more unprofitable day by day. Up to today, 90% of Indonesia’s raw rattans are non-cultivated wild rattan.

Rattanation

The issues that arose from rattan should be the problems of intranation and internation (rattanation) which need our collective attention. Surely, it needs a big effort to be free from so many rattan polemic by promoting rattan as a international commodity and a subject of concern of all parties, especially those involved within (rattanmotion); builds a communication network amongst those involved in rattan, from farmers to exporters and regulation makers, even through international network if possible (rattannet). And, last but not least, government role in supporting development and trade of rattan through wise policies and incentives to stakeholders are greatly appreciated.

In order to achieve those goals, Supporting Consortium for Community-based Forest Management System (KpSHK) intentionally plans a dialogue amongst stakeholder of rattan sector to find a solution for this non-wood commodity trading problems. Hopefully, the dialogue could intensively accommodate dynamics of information in economy and trade of rattan.

Further information contact to:

Ronald Siahaan (+62-251 8380301/+62-0818 07971266), e-mail: ronald_jakarta90@kpshk.org