Indonesian experts teach 'Lessons Without Borders'

Indonesian experts teach 'Lessons Without Borders'

By Dean Crignan

SEATTLE, Washington (JP): Last month three Indonesian environmental experts traveled to Seattle, Washington, to advise U.S. citizens and organizations on successful approaches to environmental conservation. This visit was part of a unique conference entitled "Lessons Without Borders".

Co-sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the City of Seattle and the Alliance for a Global Community, the event aimed at bringing lessons learned from U.S. assistance programs overseas back to America and applying them to domestic problems. Similar "Lessons" conferences held by USAID in other cities have been enthusiastically received by the American people. As a lead-up to Earth Day, the event focussed on environmental conservation and community development.

The four-day conference convened environmental experts from 19 developing countries and gave them a chance to meet with U.S. organizations working to protect the rich natural resources of America's Pacific Northwest region. The international delegates spent several days touring the local groups' projects, commenting and giving advice on how similar efforts had succeeded overseas. The conference concluded with a day-long seminar in which delegates and local groups discussed various approaches to community participation in environmental conservation.

By the week's end, a vast amount of information had been exchanged. Perhaps more important, though, were the personal contacts made in Seattle. The conference organizers hope the contacts will serve as a network for continued environmental cooperation worldwide.

Indonesia was well represented at the "Lessons" conference. Prof. Johan Silas was invited to discuss Indonesia's Kampong Improvement Program. A leading urban expert, Prof. Silas currently heads the Laboratory of Housing and Human Settlements at the Institute of Technology in Surabaya. He was a pioneer in launching the Kampong Improvement Program and remains active in urban issues throughout Indonesia.

Indonesia's kampong program has gained worldwide recognition for its success in bringing basic environmental infrastructure -- such as clean water, public sanitation facilities and solid waste collection -- into Indonesia's unplanned, low-income urban neighborhoods. This program was launched in the 1960s when it was observed that the absence of these basic services posed a serious threat both to the environment and to the health and well-being of kampong residents.

Community participation is the linchpin of the program. When a neighborhood is designated for improvement, a committee of local residents is consulted to determine which services are most urgently needed. The community is then actively engaged in planning and installing these services.

"Community participation allows local residents to continue the process," says Prof. Silas. "The residents are more able to maintain the new services because they were involved in the installation."

Special significance

The program is of special significance to the United States, where poor, urban neighborhoods have been plagued by crime, joblessness and despair.

"The program's success sent a message of encouragement to the American urban organizations," said Prof. Silas. "It showed them that urban development projects can be made sustainable by helping the urban poor to help themselves."

Also representing Indonesia was Nana Suparna, Forestry Manager for PT Alas Kusuma, a corporate company active in forest concession development. Suparna is well-known in Indonesia for his efforts to make forest concession management more responsive to local communities. In the mid-1980s he encouraged PT Sari Bumi Kusuma, a logging company with concessions in Kalimantan, to launch a program aimed at helping the communities around the concession area to improve their livelihood. By returning some from the benefits of the concession, PT Sari Bumi Kusuma succeeded in winning the support of the local communities and making them partners in the logging operation. Impressed with these efforts, the government in 1990 made community development programs (Program Bina Desa Hutan) compulsory for all forest concession holders.

In Seattle, Suparna spoke on a particularly successful example of concession-community cooperation: the Bukit Baka-Bukit Raya National Park in West/Central Kalimantan. This project trains local farmers to make rattan furniture using timber cut from concessions around the park. This arrangement benefits both farmers, who gain a new source of income, and the concessionaires, who earn the support of local communities and profit from having value added to their timber.

Suparna's talk in Seattle was of great interest to local environmental groups active in the Pacific Northwest, which possesses some of America's richest forests and where responsible logging is a perennial concern.

Representing Indonesia in the conference's agricultural forum was Prof. Ida Nyoman Oka, an agricultural expert who has been active for many years in Indonesia's Integrated Pest Management Program. Integrated Pest Management is an environmental approach to rice farming that seeks to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound approaches to controlling rice parasites. Instead of spraying to kill parasites, for example, the program stresses tactics like growing a healthy crop that can resist rice pests and encouraging the spread of spiders and other insects that prey on parasites.

Here too, the key is community involvement. Trainers work closely with farmers, holding class right in the rice field. These field schools seek to empower farmers with an understanding of how the plants, insects and animals in their field interact. This approach allows the farmers to make their own decisions and choose for themselves which techniques are best. Most importantly, program farmers retain the knowledge to continue making sound ecological and agricultural decisions long after the field school concludes.

Prof. Oka's discussion caught the ear of Americans engaged in agriculture and community development alike.

Earth Day and the environment were fitting themes for last week's "Lessons Without Borders" conference. The earth's fragile environment knows no borders, and the fight for ecological conservation is global, rather than a national. Similar "Lessons" conferences held by USAID in other cities have been enthusiastically received by Americans. It is hoped that through events like these, the world community can step up its efforts to learn, teach and work together toward the common goal of global stability.