Biodiversity is the future: Emil Salim

Biodiversity is the future: Emil Salim

JAKARTA (JP): A two-day biodiversity conference with almost 500 participants should increase awareness in Indonesia about the need to expend more effort on conservation rather than consumption, an official said yesterday.

"The future is in biodiversity," said economist and former environment minister Emil Salim. "If we can sustain our natural resources by the year 2020, we will be the king of the world."

Indonesia ranks among the world's top five in the world in biodiversity, he said.

When the world's population of eight billion are all aiming to change nature into industrial and residential sites, Indonesians "will have the competitive edge for survival," he said.

Emil is chairman of the Kehati Foundation which hosts the Global Biodiversity Forum of international conservation groups. It opens today at Hotel Indonesia.

The talks follow-up the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil. Co-hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, it ends on Sunday evening.

Some 470 participants hope to contribute their views to the inter-governmental Second Conference of Parties on the Convention of Biodiversity, to be held between Nov. 6 and 17 in Jakarta.

Jeffrey McNeely of the IUCN said the informal talks are expected to "find ways to spend some of the US$1 trillion a year worldwide on sustaining natural resources, not depleting them."

He was citing environmentalists' estimates that $1 trillion is spent annually to deplete natural resources.

Emil said today's meeting is vital to make the private sector more aware of the biodiversity investment opportunities.

While many companies have entered the waste treatment business, few are interested in cultivating natural resources, said Emil.

"I only wish we had many bright people who would go into (remote) areas and ask the local people about their knowledge and cultivate that knowledge (scientifically)," he said.

Compared to foreign researchers, Indonesians are still "lousy" and hesitant to enter areas full of mosquitoes or difficult to reach, he said.

McNeely said that although governments expressed their commitment to sustainability at the Earth Summit, "no one really knows how to go about it."

This, said Emil, a former economic advisor to the government, is because biodiversity is far outside of mainstream economic thinking. (anr)