Fair environmental control

Henry Heyneardhi Business Watch Indonesia, Surakarta, Central Java heyneardhi@watchbusiness.org

The government's proposal to allow 22 mining corporations to resume operations in 11.4 million hectares of protected forest (The Jakarta Post, July 19) has sparked criticism from various organizations and even government agencies. The proposal contradicts the new forestry law that bans open pit mining in protected forest areas. It also indicates the poor coordination among government agencies; the divide is most evident between the office of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy as the proponent of the proposal, and the office of the State Minister of the Environment as its opponent.

Natural resources management in Indonesia is typical of resource-rich developing countries, which lack comprehensive and integrated policy framework, accountability and transparency, choose to deliberately lose regulations, sacrifice good governance principles and prioritize economic consideration over environmental sustainability.

This country has been facing massive environmental degradation. Over the last decade, Indonesia is estimated to have lost 72 percent of 124 million hectares of its forest area. According to the World Bank, without significant changes in forest management, Sumatra will lose all of its forests by 2005, and Kalimantan, by 2010.

The Ministry of Settlements and Regional Infrastructure has also noted that Indonesia has experienced water shortages. Total water demand is currently 1,074 cubic meters per second for irrigation, domestic, municipal and industrial purposes, while the flow available during the normal climatic year is only about 790 cubic meters per second. Nearly all river basins, especially in Java, are heavily polluted, mostly from industrial activities, and therefore are not feasible to be processed for the drinking water supply.

Environmental degradation and destruction of natural resources has hampered economic growth, but more worrying is their impact on marginal communities and indigenous peoples. Our forests are home to approximately 15 million to 65 million people of forest- dependent communities, for whom forests are not merely a source of living, but also form the identity of their cultures and ways of life. Also, the decreasing freshwater supply has forced them to consume contaminated water.

These problems are deeply rooted in decades of a centralistic system that overemphasizes the government's role in the processes of planning, managing and exploiting nature, while practically neglecting community roles and participation in the decision- making process.

Though Environmental Law No. 23/1997 provides that everyone is entitled to access of information and to participate in environmental management (Article 5), these rights are left unheeded, which increases the power imbalance between the state and government against society, leading to the neglect of transparency and accountability. Such practices leave the public without a proper mechanism to challenge policies that they think biased or unfair, and thus raises the potential of generating conflicts over natural resources.

There is no piecemeal solution to this problem. The current paradigm in environmental governance needs rethinking of its fundamentals. First, we should put an emphasis on mainstreaming environmental concerns into every existing policy and regulation. This implies that environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation. It is time to treat the environment as a vanguard issue in decisions or policies.

As acknowledged in the Rio Declaration of the first Earth Summit in 1992 in Brazil, environmental problems are best handled through the participation of all concerned citizens. To be genuine, it should involve potentially affected parties and ensure that public input will influence the decision. Governments are obliged to enhance citizens' capacity, by facilitating people's access to information on the environment and natural resources.

Public participation in environmental governance has practical benefits, because it will boost the legitimacy of the proposed policies or programs, and it will also serve as an early warning system for problems that need mitigation, as well as in environmental conflicts.

But public participation is merely one stage in the larger effort to hold all decisions and policies concerning the environment and natural resources under public control. In other words, it is an effort toward democratic environmental governance. It is the only means by which to balance the three dimensions of sustainable development -- economic development, social justice and environmental sustainability.

At stake is our "shared life" because through our public institutions we acknowledge natural resources as our common heritage that should be managed for common welfare.