Expert: Corruption hurts sustainable development
A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
Comprehensive measures must be taken to combat corruption as it significantly contributes to damaging the environment, an expert said on Wednesday.
Richard Holloway from the Partnership for Governance Reform, an initiative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), said during a workshop on the global anticorruption agenda here that one clear example that corruption could damage the environment was ongoing illegal logging activities.
"It's an open secret that some private companies have bribed government officials to get forest concessions," Holloway said.
This harmful practice often ended up with illegal logging which seriously damaged the forests and the environment.
Illegal logging is considered to be one of the most damaging activities to the environment, he added.
The workshop was a fringe event at the ongoing ministerial/preparatory committee meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development here.
Holloway went on to say that the scale of forest concessions granted by the government to private companies was excessive.
In 1995, the government awarded 585 forest concessions involving a total area of 62 million hectares.
These concessions supplied between 60 and 70 million cubic metres of logs per year, far from the sustainable harvest rate of 20 million cubic meters per year, according to data provided by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).
"Illegal logging involves some 50 million cubic meters of logs per year, the equivalent to US$4 billion in financial losses per year to the state," said Walhi.
Some 25 percent of the total state losses goes into the pockets of government officials, especially the legal apparatus," said Agus Purnomo, an executive of Transparency Indonesia, an affiliate organization of Transparency International.
"Many ships transporting illegal logs are arrested by the authorities, but they are released soon afterwards due to (an alleged) lack of evidence," Agus added.
Given widespread corruption, law enforcement was far from what it should be. Law enforcement was badly needed to deter the illegal loggers from damaging the environment.
Needless to say, the absence of law enforcement had paved the way for illegal loggers to extract more logs, which further damaged the environment, said Agus.
He explained that illegal logging and deforestation had caused severe environmental degradation in forested areas as they damaged water catchment areas with ensuing heavy flooding during wet seasons and drought during dry seasons.
Meanwhile, Peter Rooke from Transparency International- Australia, explained that the organization provided technical assistance to developing countries to implement antibribery measures and good governance initiatives.
Transparency International, founded in l993, is a global anticorruption movement operating in 85 countries.
However, he admitted that the government itself was not able to eradicate corruption due to the complicated and immense problems facing it.
"NGOs, including Greenpeace, and other international organizations and agencies, such as the World Bank, have set up the Forest Integrity Network, for example, to help the government and the authorities eradicate illegal logging," said Rooke.
He further said that illegal logging was always backed up and facilitated by corrupt officials.
According to Holloway, the drive to combat corruption should not merely be confined to the sustainable development agenda since the harmful practice would bring suffering to all the people, especially children.
"People cannot send their kids to school because their are no school buildings as the money was stolen by government officials. Parents are not able to access health facilities since they have to pay bribes to the nurses, for example," said Holloway.