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