Biodiversity can tackle poverty'

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

People in Indonesia may be familiar with a traditional drug from a plant root in Kalimantan called pasak bumi that is said to enhance sexual performance, but many seemingly prefer to use the international brand viagra.

Indeed, pasak bumi which is taken from a root of a tree called Eurychoma Latifolia, contains aphrodisiac, a substance that can stimulate a man's libido.

The tree only grows in Kalimantan, Sumatra and Malaysia.

"This (preference for foreign drugs) is part of people's lack of respect for the country's rich biodiversity, which we must start changing," Liana Bratasida, Deputy State Minister for the Environment in charge of environmental conservation told the Jakarta Post.

Liana was speaking on the eve of World Biodiversity Day, which falls on Thursday.

The 2003 Biodiversity Day carries the theme: Biodiversity and Poverty Alleviation, Challenges for Sustainable Development.

Indonesia, the second largest biodiversity in the world after Brazil, is capable of producing natural cosmetics such as shampoo, lipstick and various staple foods such as rice and corn.

But only a few local cosmetics producers like Martha Tilaar and Mustika Ratu that have developed natural cosmetics in the country, Liana said.

Indonesia has also relied too much on rice and failed to develop other food alternatives. Ironically, Indonesia must now import rice at about two million tons per year as its rice production fails to meet domestic demand.

The last time Indonesia reached self sufficiency in rice was in the early 1980s, which earned then President Soeharto world acclaim from the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Other commercial items that could be produced here due to the country's rich biodiversity are handicrafts and other products, according to Liana.

"It is now crucial to launch a campaign among our people that the country's biodiversity can be used for various purposes ranging from food security to medication," she said.

"If people could start the rich biodiversity for their daily needs or even manage it in large scale production, it could help lift people out of poverty."

At present, about 40 million people in Indonesia live in poverty and are unemployed.

Therefore, Liana said, the government would need to formulate operational regulations to identify species that could be further processed on a large scale.

The regulations should also administer profit sharing between the person who discovered the species and developed the product and regional governments.

Liana admitted that although the government has issued Law No. 5/1990 on conservation of living resources and their ecosystem and Law No. 5/1994 on the ratification of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the laws were poorly implemented.

Capacity building of human resources should be the next step, followed by dissemination of information on benefits of biodiversity, she said.

Incentives and disincentives must also be introduced, such as the current tax exemption for farmers who sell their crops to Martha Tilaar cosmetics company.

"We know the effort to encourage people to take advantage of our biodiversity will not be easy, but we must start doing it," Liana said.

However, the effort to promote the use of biodiversity for people's sake is facing various challenges, including the lack of awareness about the benefits of biodiversity, huge losses of biodiversity resulting from illegal logging, land conversion and pollution.

These activities have caused the country to lose the equivalent of one species a day and 79 percent of its natural habitats in the last decade.

"But with the campaign to encourage the use of biodiversity, we hope people will know the benefits of biodiversity, stop destroying it and gain from it," she said.