'Decentralization vital in conservation drive'

'Decentralization vital in conservation drive'

JAKARTA (JP): Decisions on conservation issues are best made at a local level, environmental experts said yesterday.

"It is dangerous for the central government to set uniform policies regarding biodiversity," Indonesia's former environment minister Emil Salim said during a panel discussion on the first day of the Global Biodiversity Forum here.

"Uniformity also contradicts biodiversity, which is very specific to various parts of the country," Emil said.

A Norwegian-based environmental consultant, Michael Wells, agreed at the discussion on the need for decentralization.

Local administrations are likely to pay more respect to local traditions and be more responsive to local concerns, according to Wells, an environmental consultant.

"Increased decentralization has ... become evident in many aspects of biodiversity conservation," he added.

An example is where communities and other local stakeholders "resist development plans which are detrimental to the environment," he said.

Indonesia's State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, in his keynote address to the forum, earlier urged Indonesians "to learn as well as to unlearn in order to be faithful to our national motto, Unity in Diversity."

"We are increasingly concerned that the present mainstream development approach has needlessly caused suffering and impoverishment to people," Sarwono said.

This, he said, is "not necessarily because of ill-will, but sometimes because of a lack of understanding and respect for unique ways of life."

Emil said he hoped that decentralization could be raised in the inter-governmental Second Conference of Parties to the Convention of Biodiversity between Nov. 6 and Nov. 17.

Clause 11 of the Convention calls on signatories to "adopt economically and socially sound measures that act as incentives" for conservation.

The Convention was issued at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Emil stressed that the central government must retain the responsibility for "creating the climate" in which local governments can be responsive to the needs of environmental preservation.

Currently, he said, the trial period of Indonesia's political decentralization is giving more authority to the regency administrations.

But the regency administrations cannot yet play a role in conservation because of their "built-in tendency" to seek revenue, he said. Generating revenue is one basis on which their abilities can be judged by the central government.

Different incentives are needed to make conservation attractive to local administrators, he said.

Emil P. Bolongaita of the Manila-based Asian Institute of Management told the forum about the decentralization in forestry conservation in the southern Philippines.

The new experience, he said, led to "interventions by national officials to recover decentralized power," and the "refusal of non-government organizations to work with local officials."

Four sessions are planned for the Biodiversity Forum, which brings together more than 400 officials and activists concerned with the environment from all over the world.

Other sessions include discussions on marine and forest biodiversity and on access to genetic resources. The Forum continues today. (anr)