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Asia gets environment conscious
WHILE Indonesia continues to grapple
with the fallout of the 1997 economic crisis, the country is also
in the throes of unprecedented change engendered by a broadening
of democratic reforms.
Among the key signs of these changes is a reduction in the powers
of the national government and greater autonomy for the country’s
vast provinces and regions.
This has ramifications on many fronts including the evolving
issues of financial controls and greater autonomy in the areas of
resource development and environmental management.
In its ‘country strategy’ paper for Indonesia, the Asian
Development Bank (ADB) refers to the decentralisation process of
1999 as ‘the rapid big-bang decentralisation’ which, it said, was
unprecedented in scope and scale.
The ADB said that even though decentralisation was not preceded by
a strengthening of institutional capacity at the local government
level, the evidence to date does not suggest any deterioration in
service delivery generally.
“Critical in meeting this challenge is the need to achieve greater
functional and fiscal autonomy,” the Manila-headquartered
development bank said.
Among the laws that had been enacted in 1999 was the Clean
Environment Law, an area meant to be fraught with great danger as
powers are devolved from the centre to periphery.
Some would consider that the dangers of corruption and
mismanagement had a greater potential when control is exercised by
a central bureaucracy but this was arguably also offset by greater
transparency.
However, early results of the devolution of powers as well as the
determined efforts of Indonesia’s first ever directly elected
president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is providing reason for
cautious optimism.
One of the spectacular developments that have taken place recently
on the environmental front has been an announcement that
Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei have agreed to protect tropical
forests in the ‘Heart of Borneo’.
The forested area involved covers 220,000 square kilometres and
makes up about a third of the island of Borneo. Its incredible
scale can be better envisaged on the basis that this area is close
to about half the equivalent land area of Papua New Guinea.
According to news reports from Jakarta, 70% of the protected
forest area is in Kalimantan, or Indonesian Borneo, and the
remainder in Malaysia and Brunei.
The trilateral agreement is reportedly the result of the United
Nations-sponsored Convention on Biodiversity that was concluded in
March last year.
Forest fires from the island of Sumatra and from Kalimantan have
created environmental problems of almost nightmarish proportions
in neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.
According to Harry Bhaskara of the Jakarta Post, these forest
fires have made Indonesia the world’s third biggest emitter of
greenhouse gases with decades of forest fires having created a
deadly haze that had cost lives and become a yearly nuisance to
neighbouring countries.
According to some data, PNG is also among the world’s top 20
emitters of greenhouse gases from forest or bush fires caused by
human activities.
According to the Jakarta Post, Indonesia has lost about half its
forest in Kalimantan following destruction at the rate of two
million hectares annually since 1996, a major ecological disaster
on a national and a global scale.
“For Malaysia and Brunei, their participation in the agreement is
a testament to their magnanimity: even though they are victims of
the haze, they are still willing to work with Indonesia,” writes
Mr Bhaskara.
On a more somber note, he adds: “Although it is a good beginning,
an agreement is nothing more than a piece of paper. What counts
now is strict implementation.
“Should the agreement turn out to be meaningless, Indonesia’s
reputation will be harmed, as well as Asean’s, because the Borneo
tropical forest is the last great block of forest in the world,
which the world community has committed to save.
“Our joint endeavour to be good stewards of the forests
contributes to a healthy global climate. It is time to show the
world that Indonesia is capable of producing good news.”
As a result of greater regional autonomy, North Sulawesi governor
Sinjo Harry Sarundajang, has been able to tell the Indonesian
national parliament that he has rejected a controversial
development proposal from a multinational gold company because he
did not want “to watch the destruction of nature in our area”.
In another initiative on the forestry front, forestry minister M S
Kaban had agreed to a swap with a number of forestry companies
under which 52,000 hectares of forest would be converted into
industrial forest in exchange for the inclusion of 60,000 hectares
into the park on the island of Riau.
The deal has the backing of the global conservation group, WWF,
but is opposed by others, including Greenonomics Indonesia, which
argues that it threatens the access of local people to forests
that are rich in diversity.
Meanwhile, the government has announced plans to reclaim vast
areas of peatland in Central Kalimantan for development of
agricultural land near the provincial capital, Palangkaraya.
Up to 500,000 hectares will be planted with rice and other crops,
as well as for cattle breeding and aquaculture under the plan.
The project involves an area identified by the former Suharto
government for similar development that had previously been
abandoned.
The decision to intensively farm the peatlands can be viewed
negatively from an environmental perspective in view of the area’s
biodiversity and the vast amounts of carbon trapped within the
peat, a very low ranked form of coal.
But Central Kalimantan governor Teras Narang was quick to
simultaneously announce that an additional 600,000 hectares of
peatland would be conserved to reduce damage to the ecosystem.
Apparently not one to mince words after getting cabinet approval,
Governor Narang told reporters: “We hope that what is now a land
of a million woes will be converted into a land of a million hopes
again.”
Indonesia is said to host the world’s fourth largest area of peat,
covering some 17 million hectares of which 13 million could
potentially be used for agricultural activities.
The failure of a previous project costing US$133 million in the
mid-1990s ended up an environmental disaster with much of the 1.1
million hectare area turning into what the Jakarta Post has
described as “a barren wasteland”.
The current government has already reclaimed 13,000ha of peatland.
The first rice crop was harvested in September last year as part
of the government’s aim to increase rice production by two million
tonnes to 32.9 million tonnes annually.
 
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