Fair environmental control

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.