Focusing on critical politics of environment

Focusing on critical politics of environment

The Politics of Environment in Southeast Asia;
Philip Hirsch and Carol Warren, editors;
Routeledge;
xiii + 325pp

JAKARTA (JP): When a few weeks ago Minister of Forestry and
Plantations Muslimin Nasution declared that his ministry had
uncovered Soeharto family and crony-connected forest holdings
covering nine million hectares, "an area the size of Java",
nobody was especially surprised. Shocked, yes. Angry, yes. But
not surprised. This question, after all, goes right to the heart
of the New Order power structure.

In September 1984, the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature issued a report stating that the 1982 and
1983 forest fires in Kalimantan, that had blanketed Southeast
Asia with smog, constituted the "biggest environmental
catastrophe of the 20th century". The East Kalimantan governor
responded with maximum insouciance; it was "no big deal", he
said. We all know what would have happened if he had said
otherwise.

That was 1984. Fourteen years on and the BBC was reporting
that Kalimantan fires were burning across "an area the size of
England and Wales". Further disaster was being visited on Sumatra
and Sulawesi.

There is an indisputable connection between this
"environmental catastrophe" and the politics of the New Order.
Why were no major prosecutions carried out of forest
concessionaires in the affected areas? One has to say that it was
simply because the constellation of forces around the former
president had too much at stake.

Take East Kalimantan, where Soeharto's second son, Bambang
Trihatmodjo, alone has holdings of over 700,000 hectares; then
look at Muhammad "Bob" Hasan with 1.63 million hectares in Aceh,
East Kalimantan and Southeast Sulawesi. It would be extremely
naive to believe that these are the kind of people with a finely
tuned environmental consciousness. Hasan's own plywood company,
we are told, increased "production seven-fold over the decade
1981 to 1991", a measure of his rapacity if ever there was one.

What this excellent collection of essays in Politics of
Environment in SE Asia; Resources and Resistance sets out to
examine is the emergence of a new politics of the environment and
the relationship between power holders across the Southeast Asian
region and the dynamic environmental action groups that have
appeared almost everywhere.

The great changes wrought by the so-called "Asian miracle"
have impacted massively on the environment, as the lugubrious
statistics quoted above prove, but have also given rise to
resistance. It is no coincidence that Indonesia's vibrant student
movement began in part with on-campus conflict between
environmental NGOs and pro-New Order student cadet corps. Neither
is it a coincidence that groups such as Malaysia's Sahabat Alam
have felt the thick end of state repression.

Environmentalism, written off in neighboring Malaysia as some
kind of Western conspiracy against the country, is a politics of
urgency, and is now motivating small but significant groups in
all the ASEAN countries with the exceptions of Brunei and
associate member, Myanmar. The latter, of course, is perhaps even
more in need of environmental intervention than any other as its
once legendary teak forests disappear to finance the kleptocratic
State Peace and Development Council (formerly SLORC).

Injustice in the course of development certainly shaped a
popular anger, as George Junus Aditjondro illuminates in Large
Dam Victims and Their Defenders, in which he looks at the
Kedungombo case. Here, an environmental question impacted on a
local community with no experience of organizing. Javanese wong
cilik (common people) were not expected to speak up but the
involvement of sympathetic educated activists gave them voice.

Aditjondro details several other Indonesian dam schemes and
the variety of responses to them; the notable case of the
Kotopanjang dam in Riau demonstrates how determined local
resistance, in this instance over more than 17 years, could be
effected despite the New Order's heavy-handedness.

Dams are notoriously associated with grandiose power projects
of authoritarian governments in developing countries; from
Nasser's Aswan Dam to Beijing's Three Gorges scheme, many have
proved disastrous.

Michael Mitchell looks at one river "development" project with
the potential to be even more ruinous, the Mekong Basin scheme.
"Centered on national and international bureaucracies well
removed from the social bases and needs of the people living in
the basin", as Mitchell puts it, this scheme would involve six
countries -- Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and China
-- all with a wretched recent record of environmental protection.

Laos and Cambodia are so strategically weak that their opening
up to the full force of global capital -- which is what this
scheme would entail -- would probably mean the end for them.

If one can easily point a finger at the New Order power
holders, what of the leaders of other countries? Perhaps the most
dismal forestry record of all belongs not to this country nor to
neighboring Malaysia or the Philippines but to Myanmar. The self-
styled State Peace and Development Council has ruled over a
feverish deforestation in its once timber-rich country and its
members have enriched themselves greatly in the process.

Raymond Bryant examines this in The Politics of Forestry in
Burma and demonstrates how well-capitalized Thai logging firms
have been among the major beneficiaries. The Burma regime's
profligacy is illustrated by its practice of making sales of
timber up to two years in advance "in order to raise quick
revenue".

This brings us to what seems to be an inescapable truth: that
the power elites in the region collaborate with one another in
resource extraction, and the most environmentally unfriendly
entrepreneurs are often to be found working hand-in-glove with
the most politically repressive regimes.

Why, for instance, during last year's forest fires here were
Malaysian scientists ordered by their government not to issue
statements on the Indonesia-derived smog hazard that was ruining
the health of millions of Malaysians? Because, one fancies, its
own record is dismal, as Michael Leigh demonstrates in Logging in
Sarawak, an essay which begins with the statement that a forest
is a political as well as an economic resource. A political
patronage system has grown up in Sarawak around the granting of
logging licenses.

Leigh says that "what is unambiguous to those concerned with
the actual exploitation is that there is a clear financial
imperative to market the greatest volume of saw logs as quickly
as possible".

The unregulated free market then is the enemy of the forest.
As it is, too, of Dayak children's health in heavily logged areas
where the lack of wild boar has caused a major fall in protein
intake.

There are areas of environmental concern that this volume does
not touch upon, the trade in wildlife being one. Recent seizures
of thousands of cobras worth hundreds of millions of rupiah at
the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport prove that lucrative
business is a serious issue still, as, indeed, any walk along the
Barito or Jatinegara bird markets in Jakarta would also show.

However, the writers have done a fine job of examining a
number of the major issues affecting the politics of the
environment in this great region, including the slippery question
of the cultural impact of tourism.

The book will come as an extremely helpful addition to
literature on the Southeast Asian environment. Malaysian
biologist David Lee sounded the tocsin in the early 1980s with
The Sinking Ark, a well-informed but essentially pessimistic tome
about the deterioration of the regional biosphere. The
intervening years have given greater cause for concern, and
Hirsch and Warren have brought together a mass of penetrating
analysis and detail to illuminate the necessary ongoing debates.

-- David Jardine