Erosion and responsibility

Imagine a cooperative factory in a small village. It has two sewing machines, a cloth cutting machine, a few other pieces of equipment, and manages to support five or six families.

Now imagine that one of the families sells the spare parts and keeps the money. Then another family dismantles the machines and sells the pieces, keeping the proceeds. The cooperative goes out of business and everyone goes hungry, including the two families who caused the trouble.

Everyone from pragmatic business analysts to wooley thinking environmentalists would agree that this is selfish and short- sighted behavior. Anyone who pointed out that it is stupid or even criminal could not be accused of being against economic progress.

A tropical forest is like a factory. If properly cared for, it can support economic activity. But ignorant, short-sighted activity like that in East Kalimantan over the past ten years has destroyed the forest factory and turned it into scrub grassland fit for nothing except grazing a few cattle for a short time until the heavy rains destroy even the hillsides.

In case anyone thinks that is a doomsday scenario, I invite them to have a look at the hills between Balikpapan, Samarinda and Sengatta and note the terrible erosion which has already taken place. Then imagine what will happen when some cowboy entrepreneur who is politically well-connected introduces cattle. Yippie-kai-ay!

GARY GENTRY

Jakarta