Government to beef up environment law

Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is preparing an integrated team to better investigate and prosecute environment-related offenses, to avoid previous cases where defendants were charged with lenient indictments.

The team, proposed by the office of the State Ministry for the Environment and the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), will include police, the prosecutors' office, environmental consultants, and officials from related government institutions, such as the Ministry of Forestry.

"My office, as one of its initiators, is of course fully supportive of the establishment of such a team, and is prepared to act as its coordinator," said State Minister for the Environment Nabiel Makarim on Monday, on the sidelines of a seminar on the revision of Law No.23/1997 on the environment.

ICEL senior consultant Achmad Santosa said besides ensuring that environment-related cases would be better handled, the team is also expected to help build a unified stance among concerned government institutions.

He added that more efficient cooperation and supervision among the institutions was also expected.

"The public would also have more access to participate in the supervision, as experts on the environment are included in the team," said Achmad.

Achmad, however, admitted that the new arrangement was still prone to collusion but stressed that such a practice could be minimized during the recruitment process.

"The coordinator of the team will tightly screen the candidates from each institution for integrity, besides capability," said Achmad, adding that the blueprint for the establishment of the team would hopefully be ready in the coming three months.

Achmad also said that ICEL had proposed that the Supreme Court provide training for judges on environmental laws, and suggested that ad hoc trials be established for environmental cases.

Previously, Chief Justice Bagir Manan also called for better cooperation between police, prosecutors' offices and courts for the thorough processing of environment-related cases.

He also mentioned that his office had trained about 850 judges on environmental laws, and on how to handle environment-related cases, while acknowledging that about 400 prosecutors had also undergone similar training.

Bagir, however, admitted that the number of trained judges was still far from the ideal, whereby one trained judge would be placed in each court house in the country.