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.