'Govt lacks will to reduce pollution'

'Govt lacks will to reduce pollution'

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Environmentalists have said the government must pay more
attention to the environment in its development policies, in
order to reduce pollution problems at home before it is too late.

"The way the government manages the government is way off
track," executive director of the Indonesian Center of
Environmental Law (ICEL) Wiwiek Awiati told the Jakarta Post on
Thursday.

She said the government was not sufficiently aware of the
environment, as evident from its weak environmental policies and
poor enforcement of the law against those violating environmental
regulations.

"Law enforcement against polluters cannot be upheld, and
environmental legislation lacks power to deter them here;
therefore, many polluters remain untouchable," she said.

The US$1 million fine imposed on plantation firm PT Adei
Plantation for clearing land using slash-and-burn methods was
encouraging, but not enough, said Wiwiek.

"What about air, water and waste polluters?" she added.

Wiwiek was responding to the World Bank report on the
environment in Indonesia, which said the country was under threat
from air, water, solid and hazardous waste pollution.

The Environment Impact Management Agency (Bapedal), which is
expected to take a leading role in environmental conservation as
a result of its authority to approve environmental impact
assessments (Amdal), was powerless, she said.

Worse still, the government managed to allocate only a small
budget to the Office of the State Minister of the Environment,
thus limiting its scope to chase polluters, she said.

The monitoring of companies that are prone to polluting the
environment remained insufficiently thorough, which left the
government with inadequate evidence to sue them.

Senior official at the Office of the State Minister of the
Environment Masnellyarti Hilman admitted that limited funding was
the main obstacle to her office's efforts.

"We even have difficulty in monitoring environmental quality
at the sites of large companies such as Newmont Minahasa Raya,
Freeport Indonesia and Toba Pulp Lestari," she said.

Wiwiek said there were many confusing regulations related to
the environment, which caused conflict between environmental and
industrial interests.

Law No 41/1999, which bans opencast mining in protected
forest, is still expected, by mining companies, to be amended.

Indonesian Forum on the Environment (Walhi) executive director
Longgena Ginting agreed with Wiwiek.

He claimed that environmental management by the government in
the last seven years had deteriorated, in view of the huge number
of incidents involving pollution and environmental disasters.

Ginting even accused the current government of being a regime
without an environmental agenda.

Wiwiek suggested that the government start improving the
environment by implementing a system of linked licenses for
companies, ranging from operating to environmental licenses.

"Thus, if a company pollutes the environment, the state
minister of the environment revokes the environmental license,
and the other licenses are automatically revoked, too," she said.

The government should also establish under one roof an
environmental enforcement body, comprising civil servants, police
and prosecutors, to help simplify the process of legal action,
she said.

For the sake of justice, the Supreme Court ought to establish
a special court for environmental cases due to the huge impact of
pollution on people and the environment.

"The public must also continuously monitor law enforcement on
polluters," she said.

She added that companies that managed to protect the
environment deserved incentives.