As written by Chris Lang on April 6″ 2012

On 8 March 2012″ the World Bank announced that the Draft Indonesia Forest Investment Plan was posted on the Ministry of Forestry’s website. The 114-page document was posted in English” with a comment period of “a little over two weeks”.

An Indonesian version has now been produced and is available on the Ministry of Forestry website. But the commenting process is far from transparent. Comments are to be sent to an email address. There is no way of knowing who commented” what they said” or whether their comments were incorporated into the final document. Instead” comments received “will be considered by the team to assess the level of relevance”.

The document is part of the World Bank’s Forest Investment Program” which in turn is part of the Bank’s Climate Investment Fund. The document was to be considered for endorsement at the next meeting of the FIP Sub-committee” which takes place on 4 May 2012. However” the final version must be posted on the FIP website four weeks before the meeting if it is to be considered at that meeting.

A group of NGOs based in Indonesia wrote in protest at the poor consultation process. The NGOs are now demanding that the FIP process in Indonesia is postponed until their demands are met.

The correspondence follows:

    The NGO letter to the Joint FIP Team (16 March 2012);

    A translation of the Joint FIP Team’s response (19 March 2012); and

    The NGO reply to the Joint FIP Team (5 April 2012)

The correspondence is available in full in Bahasa Indonesia here.