Govt should heed 'lessons' from landslides, floods

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Landslides and floods, which frequently hit the country, should be reason enough for the government to pay more attention to environmental issues as those disasters are due to environmental destruction including logging, legal or otherwise, said an environmental expert.

Ridha Saleh of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) said that if the government failed to pay serious attention to environmental issues such as illegal logging or illegal farming, the country's forests would be completely destroyed within a very short time.

Since forests function to absorb groundwater that in turn prevents floods and landslides, they play an important role in the ecosystem.

"The natural environment in Indonesia has been so damaged due to over-exploitation such as logging. Our government treats natural resources as an object, not as a resource that can protect and support human lives," Ridha told The Jakarta Post.

He added that the government has considered environmental issues unimportant and has not listed them on its main agenda.

"The destruction of forests, through illegal logging or conversion into farmland, has become a human rights violation because it leads to natural disasters which ultimately destroy human lives," Ridha said.

He mentioned as an example that in Java, 400,000 hectares of land had been converted into housing projects, hence the land had lost its original function to absorb water.

"I don't want to imagine what's going to happen to Indonesia next if the government fails to prevent further damage to the natural environment. Java island might be submerged in a few years time," he said.

Data from Walhi shows that the degradation rate of Indonesian forests has kept climbing from 1.5 million hectares per year in the 1980s to 2.7 million per year in 1990s to 3.5 million hectares per year currently.

A similar comment was made by Elfian Effendi from Greenomics, a non-governmental organization (NGO) dealing with environmental issues as well as economic issues.

Elfian said that the government had not realized that the environment cost of felling trees outweighed the financial benefits gained, whether in the case of illegal or legal logging.

He added that Indonesia's forests have been exploited for more than 30 years and it might be the time to rest and wait around 10 years before the forests can renew themselves.

"The government should call on the businessmen to stop exploiting our forests because there is no equilibrium between the people and environment anymore," Elfian said.

"The decision might make those businessmen suffer huge financial losses but the government should also think that it's always the small people who suffer in natural disasters. Surely sacrificing money is better than sacrificing human lives?" Elfian said.