Ian Dutton: A voice for Indonesia

Ian Dutton: A voice for Indonesia

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The departing Indonesia country director for U.S. non-
governmental organization The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Ian Myles
Dutton, wants to be a positive voice for Indonesia in Washington,
where he will take up his new position as director for a
conservation measures group.

"Indonesia doesn't have many good people speak about it
outside of Indonesia. You know, most of the news is negative
news, and in Washington I'm hoping that I can be a voice for
Indonesia, for the environment, because people generally don't
get that perspective otherwise," Dutton said in an interview
recently.

A great man in his own right and eloquent about his views and
beliefs, he said he had become attached to Indonesia, where he
has worked for a total of 10 years doing conservation work, first
with the government and in the last three years with TNC.

"I have to say this; Indonesia has been very good to me. It's
been really wonderful for me to come to a country like Indonesia
where everything you do has more significance of value than
something you might do in a country like Australia," said the 47-
year-old native of Tasmania.

"It's hard to describe that difference. In Australia, I used
to work many years ago for the Great Barrier Reef Authority, and
you know if you do something with the barrier reef, it was okay,
but it was already well protected, it was already a good system.

"Whereas when you come to Indonesia, you do a small thing in a
place like Wakatobi (Southeast Sulawesi) and it has a big impact,
so it's really rewarding in Indonesia to do the work I've been
doing. It's been wonderful to me to learn how to be effective
here and just to see the benefits to the people and the places."

A former environmental planning lecturer at the University of
New England in New South Wales, Australia, Dutton was no stranger
to Indonesia, having helped with training and research here with
the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO)
BIOTROP, the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Tropical Biology
in Bogor, West Java, and various governmental institutions in the
mid 1980s.

But his first lasting attachment with Indonesia came at the
invitation of the Indonesian government to spend a year at
Diponegoro University in Semarang, helping to develop a national
curriculum on marine science in the early 1990s. It was there
that he got in touch with the TNC and learned more about its work
in Indonesia.

TNC is the largest environmental NGO in the United States, and
it and the World Wildlife Fund are the two largest environmental
organizations in the world.

Based in Virginia, TNC works in the United States, various
countries in the Caribbean and Latin America, as well as seven
countries in the Asia Pacific, including Indonesia.

When his year at Diponegoro ended, Dutton returned to
Australia, but apparently Indonesia was not finished with him.

"I kept getting asked to come back," he said, adding that he
finally returned in early 1996 to Makassar to develop coastal
management programs in South Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, Southeast
Sulawesi, Maluku and Papua.

At the end of that time, Dutton gave up his job at the
University of New England to become chief of party for USAID's
coastal project in Indonesia.

"So I did that for five years, and then joined TNC in 2001 so
it's kind of a natural progression in some ways."

TNC was first invited by the Indonesian government in 1991 to
help manage and strengthen its national parks program.

Since then TNC has established 10 offices in Java, Kalimantan,
Sulawesi, Bali, Komodo Island, Wakatobi and Sorong, and employs
190 staff, of which 181 are locals.

The group's work here is fully funded by donors outside of
Indonesia. When working with foreign donors, Dutton tries to
stress to them the importance of Indonesia for the preservation
of biodiversity on earth.

"Indonesia is the most important country in the world for
biodiversity. If you look at the terrestrial biodiversity -- the
plants and animals -- it ranks number three for highest diversity
after Brazil and Columbia."

"But if you look at the marine side, it's number one, and it's
daylights to the next country. It is the most important country
by a mile for marine life, so when you put the two of them
together, marine and terrestrial, Indonesia is clearly the most
important country in the world for biodiversity."

The job, however, was not easy, as there has been so much bad
publicity for Indonesia over the last couple of years.

"Most people outside Indonesia have a very negative impression
of Indonesia. It's very hard to convince someone outside of
Indonesia to give money for anything in Indonesia. They see the
corruption, they see the terrorism, they see these negative
things," Dutton said.

TNC's work in Indonesia includes a national program to help
the government develop environmental policy, training and
capacity building, a marine program based in Bali for the
conservation of coral reefs and fish, a program focused on East
Kalimantan and the conservation of coral reefs, orangutans and
lowland rainforest.

There is also a program in Sulawesi. "We're now working with
every province in Sulawesi to build up a conservation plan for
all of Sulawesi. We're trying to develop a map that shows where
abouts in Sulawesi are the critical areas to conservation."

A new program just started in Papua where the TNC is working
to conserve the Raja Empat coral reefs, as well as cooperating
with British oil and gas company BP to protect the largest
mangrove forest in the world at Bintuni Bay.

At the end of a decade of working in Indonesia, Dutton said
that "the thing I'm most proud of I guess overall, and TNC is
just a part of that, is to look at how the capacity of key people
has grown, through the work I've been doing with them, helping
build their capacity".