ASEAN forum for an environmentally friendly future

ASEAN forum for an environmentally friendly future

By Jules Bell

JAKARTA (JP): Regional environmentally sustainable economic
progress, Indonesia's rain forest and political will emerged as
central issues on Monday at the First Konrad Adenauer Foundation
Forum on Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) Media and
the Environment.

Held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the forum's participants
included leading regional media professionals, ASEAN
representatives and environmental experts.

Participants discussed current regional environmental issues
and future strategies for governments and industry to avoid what
the chairman of the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation, Emil
Salim, warned could be a "dirty Asia" in 2010.

"The world will depend on Asia for its environment," stressed
Salim. The former state minister for the environment described
Indonesia's 114 million hectares of rain forest as one of the
three most important such natural resources in the world,
alongside those in Brazil and Zaire.

In addition to its ecological value, Salim said a healthy
Indonesian rain forest could ensure the nation and the ASEAN
region a "competitive advantage" in the future, beyond the sale
of wood to medicinal products. "The forest is more than just
timber. It is medicine," he said.

The difficulty of ASEAN's role in reconciling regional aims
and individual member practices, in the face of the association's
policy of non-interference with neighbor countries, was an
emergent theme using the haze from Indonesia's forest fires as a
model.

ASEAN secretary general Rodolfo C. Severino said ministers had
met and agreed to urge Indonesia to take action and punish the
state companies responsible for the burning of the forests.
ASEAN is yet to decide on how to enforce this he said, and
resolve what he described as both a regional and "national
issue".

"There is no alternative to regional cooperation," said
Severino, in light of the haze's effect on neighboring countries.
"Since it is a regional problem then a regional solution needs to
be involved," he said.

Severino stressed the lack of, and need for a formal agreement
from parties that the rest can evoke if a violation occurs,
particularly considering that most environmental law is what he
called "soft law".

Political will and a nation's capacity to enforce green
practices was described by both Severino and Salim as
interdependent.

"Political will is nothing if the enforcement capacity is not
there," said Severino. Indonesia faces a difficult problem
domestically, particularly with regard to its forests he said,
because enforcement must reach from national policy into
provincial political practices.

Following Severino, Salim said environmental matters are only
discussed when they become issues, or when circumstances demand
their attention.

"In many ASEAN member countries," he explained, "the
environment is considered peripheral."

Salim said the focus of ASEAN countries on economic issues
amid the region's financial crisis in recent years, had severely
displaced efforts to promote environmentally responsible
practices.

"Unemployment leads to civil disobedience," he said, and
combined with corruption in government authorities and a lack of
transparency had led to a "severe crisis of authority" in
Indonesia. This had led to logging, burning and the "misuse of
land" in rain forest areas for agricultural plantations he said.

Social pressure and the role of non-government organizations
(NGO) are crucial to an environmentally sustainable future for
ASEAN countries added Salim. Describing the relationship between
social, environmental and economic factors as an integrated
triangle, Salim promoted the "empowering of the civil society".

A weak civil society operating alongside a strong government
and business sector is a recipe for failure in the pursuit of a
greener future he argued.

Environmental resource management, clean technology and on-
site attention involving consultation with experts, in
conjunction with legal and moral regional benchmarks, were
proposed by Salim as fundamental in any environmental strategy.
"It is not being done, and it can be done," he said.

Jail for offenders and the actual prosecution of criminals
were mechanisms for the successful enforcement of environmental
laws he said. Using the forest fires as an example, which he said
had to date cost Indonesia over US$7 billion, Salim lamented that
Indonesia had "beautiful environmental laws", the enforcement of
which he had never seen.

"The whole plantation development smells," he said in regard
to the burning of forests. Salim said Indonesia's total
rain forest area was theoretically divided into 66 million
hectares for production, and 48 million hectares of protected
forest. The reality of corruption and illegal logging was quite
different he said.

"What is the normal logic?" he asked rhetorically, "that the
illegal cutting is going into the 48 million hectares of
protected forest." The forests are being logged well beyond the
29 million hectares per year quota he said.

"The reality is that the total cut is more than 29, you should
add another 34 million hectares," he said, admitting: "Basically,
there is no radical change in environmental policy."

Speaking from his experience with Indonesia's biodiversity,
Salim placed the country's rain forest among the worlds most
important nature reserves due to its wealth of birds, mammals and
micro-organisms.

Another avenue for a cleaner future is the internalization of
cost, environment competence and responsibility on the part of
industry itself according to Richard Shephard, the deputy
executive director of US-Asia Environmental Partnership (US-AEP).

Status as a leading economic and environmentally responsible
company is not an oxymoron he said. In contrast, a company's
economic management and success increasingly equates to its
standards of environmental practices.

The aim of US-AEP in this context said Sheppard, is to promote
the "exchange of technology and experience" because Asia in the
1990's "could be on the cusp of a clean revolution." In his
opinion, no challenge for the future is greater than transforming
the economy into one which is ecologically sustainable.

This challenge said Sheppard, is amid predictions that by 2010
Asia could produce half of all global carbon dioxide, half of all
Asians will live in urban areas by 2020 and 80 percent of
industry's production plants and infrastructure are yet to be
built.

Optimistically, he said an increasing trend toward green
practices does exist worldwide, including consumer dependent
corporate images and the integration of environmentally friendly
commercial purchasing and supply decisions for companies.
Describing this as "greening the supply chain", Sheppard said
companies gained numerous advantages from such an approach, all
of which will become increasingly important in a more
environmentally aware future.

Citing Nike as an example of companies he described as pro-
active "environmental champions in Indonesia", Sheppard said the
company had made environmental practices a priority, and had
assisted suppliers in integrating acceptable environmental
standards into their production processes.

The overall theme of the forum was the importance of regional
cooperation and the political commitment of member countries to a
greener future. Immediate financial gain at the expense of the
environment would be tragic it emerged, considering both the
ecological and economic advantages of these natural resources in
the 21st century.