Ginting works to win public support

Moch. N.Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Funding sources may not seem too sensitive a topic, but when a non-governmental organization (NGO) is directly questioned about the source of their funds, it can be hard for them to answer, and at times even upsetting.

Longgena Ginting, the new executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) -- the country's largest and most powerful environmental NGO -- said that this question often puts him in an uncomfortable situation.

"When NGOs say their funds come from foreign donors, people instantly laugh, accusing you of representing foreigners and not the people in this country," he said.

"This question is very cynical and it has become the source of a bad campaign for NGOs. We have to start changing it. We should be able to cut down on funds from foreign donors and raise funds from the public," said Longgena, who started leading the organization in June of last year after joining it at a national level in 1996.

He said increased public funding would indicate people's strong support toward the organization, thus strengthening its legitimacy while at the same time, making the organization work hard to be more accountable to the public.

Unlike some people, who never use the good ideas they have, Ginting has put his to work by setting up Walhi's public fund- raising division.

"It's not an easy job, but we hope that in the next five years 50 percent of our funding will come from the public and in 10 years, we will no longer need foreign donors," said Ginting, who married Eva Castener, a Spaniard and his colleague from Plasma, an NGO from East Kalimantan. They both have a daughter.

He insisted that efforts to set up the new division were not solely about money, but more about legitimacy. "Just imagine, if we could get 200,000 supporters who were willing to financially support us, our fight would be more legitimate," he said. He was referring to the success of Greenpeace and NGOs in South Korea, which relied on grants the general public and did not receive any from foreign countries.

Will his ideas spark a response from the public?

Ginting said many would be skeptical about his efforts, but he pinned his hopes on a survey, which cited that of the Rp 3 trillion in annual public donations, most of them were for environment-related causes.

This is not the first time Ginting has wanted to make a difference. A few years before he became the director of Walhi, Ginting initiated calls for a moratorium on logging amid the destruction of forests because of illegal logging following the fall of then president Soeharto in 1998.

Although the government did not impose a moratorium, his efforts raised people's concern for the destruction of the forests.

Born in Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra on July 26, 1968, Ginting is not a new activist striving to save the forests.

In 1988, he made a brave move by joining Plasma, a critical NGO in East Kalimantan, when he was a first-year student at Mulawarman University's School of Forestry. Plasma is a member of Walhi.

"When I entered university in 1988, there was no doubt in my mind but to choose working with an NGO at this part of my life, although at that time, the government was always suppressing their movement and some activists would go missing or get kidnapped," Ginting said.

At that time, many thought that he was not being wise by joining a local NGO as it would put him in a vulnerable position with the government and the military. The NGO was located far from the spotlight of the mass media in Jakarta, which meant there was a lack of publicity in case something did go wrong.

For Ginting, the threats became a challenge for him to become more creative in taking legal precautions to voice people's interests.

His form of grassroots activism once inspired him to lead people to an area in East Kalimantan to simply sit down and to stop the trucks from taking over the land.

"We took action in ways that were not against the law so we would not get arrested by the government," Ginting said.

During his time in Plasma, Ginting and his colleagues launched at least two important campaigns.

The first was protesting the Kutai administration's arbitrary acquisition of swallow nests from locals who had managed them for a long time. The administration turned a deaf ear to this protest and went ahead with auctioning the nests off, which earned them hundreds of millions of rupiah.

"We protested their arbitrary claim until the central government got wind of the problem and finally changed the policy. It is slowly being acknowledged that locals have the right to manage swallow nests," Ginting said.

His second action was an investigation into the management of timber firm Barito Pacific as it was going to go public through initial public offerings (IPO). At that time, Ginting and his friends discovered that Barito's management of its forest concession was poor and unsustainable.

"We announced the results of our investigation to the world. What we tried to say at that time was if the general public bought shares in Barito, they would only be contributing to the destruction of the forest and in effect, violating human rights. It had a lot of influence on Barito's IPO, although Barito still carried it out," he said.

For his colleagues at Walhi, Ginting has been successful in his career with only minor failures. One colleague, Hening Tarlan, said it was too early to compare him with Walhi's previous executive directors, such as Emmy Hafild.

She suggested Ginting to develop, among other things, his political skills as many environmental policies were strongly related to politics rather than having professional considerations.

With his 15 years of experience, Ginting might not have problems in carrying out his job, plans and dreams.

Ginting has come up with fresh ideas, such as setting up the public fund-raising division and creating a friendly atmosphere for the public.

"We hope he can help make Walhi's campaign to get closer to the public a reality," Hening said.