1 Geographic Indications for Javanese teak: a constitutional change.

Summary: The central issue addressed in this paper is whether Geographic Indication as a tool can be applied to encourage some furniture industries and teak producers to take a collective action in improving teak product quality and increasing global market competitiveness. This paper will explore the possibility of implementing GI on teak as a mean to improve local community rights to manage teak resources, Perum Perhutani revenues and the perception of teak wood products on National and International markets, employment in furniture industry. The paper also discusses the institutional arrangement to enable GI implementation on teak. After the 1998 financial crisis, Javanese furniture industries experienced a boom but illegal logging in State forest surged as well. Unfortunately this development was disconnected from forest resources capacities. Stakeholders made a living from bad practices and miss-use of forest resources. Due to bad qualities furniture were rejected and wood was wasted. Instead of producing high quality teak products, Java turned into a mass production of cheap furniture for national and international market. As a result wood supply was shrinking, putting today many furniture enterprises and their hundred of thousand employees in jeopardy. Indonesian furniture is getting a bad reputate on international market