Indonesia's rich natural resources won't last forever

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A high ranking official with the (then) Trade and Industry Ministry was clearly puzzled when a journalist asked for his comment about a number of companies accused of polluting a river in West Java.

Seconds later, he laughed and asked the journalist to solicit comments from the State Minister for the Environment instead.

"I work for the Trade and Industry Ministry, not the KLH," he said, referring to the State Ministry of the Environment.

The response clearly reflects the mind-set of most decision makers here -- that environmental issues are exclusive; separate from issues of trade or industry.

The Chairman of the Indonesian Forum for Environment (WALHI), Longgena Ginting, says decision makers are ignorant of the fact that environmental issues always link to other aspects of life.

"Decision makers here always associate environmental issues with floods, droughts, landslides, pollution and waste," says Longgena, complaining that they fail to understand the core of environmentalism -- that nature has its limits.

The nation's economic policies are often considered exploitative from the environmental perspective. This year Indonesia saw two major environmental cases that highlighted this tendency.

The first was the enactment of the water resources law in February, and the second the issuance of a presidential decree on mining, followed by a government regulation in lieu of law that allows 13 mining companies to resume open-pit mining operations in protected forests.

Speculation has been rife among activists and experts that the water resources law was enacted in order to allow privatization of the water sector, as has been sought by certain international water companies.

The regulation on open-pit mining seems to have been issued to avoid possible lawsuits by mining companies in arbitration courts. The 13 mining companies are among 22 mining firms that had sought to resume operations in protected forests. They had previously received contracts from the government years before the Forestry Law was introduced and the government designated concession areas as protected forest.

Environmental activists, however, contend that environmental destruction caused by open-pit mining outweighs any economic gains from mining operations.

The 2003 state of the environment report, which outlines the condition of the country's environment, reveals that supply of water in 2003 reached 483.1 billion cubic meters while demand was 66.4 billion cubic meters during the dry season.

By 2020, it is projected that demand for water will reach 75.5 billion cubic meters while supply will remain static at 483.1 billion cubic meters.

"It appears that Indonesia plenty of water but there is a deficit in Java and Bali, which have only 25.3 billion cubic meters of water to meet a demand of 38.1 billion cubic meters," it says. The combined population of Java and Bali makes up around 60 percent of the country's more than 220 million people.

The reduction of forest area in Java -- currently only 15 percent of the island's 12 million hectares -- has been blamed as the major cause of its water deficit of 32 billion cubic meters a year since 1995. Java will very likely suffer a water deficit of 134 billion cubic meters per year by 2010.

The report also warns that the water resources continue to decline due to excessive water pollution, either by industry, households or agriculture, while population continues to grow.

"People mistakenly consider the amount of water in the world to be constant due to the hydrology cycle. In fact, the quality of water continues to decrease so that an increasing proportion of it cannot be consumed," the report said.

Land is the most important store area for water during the rainy season. "Unfortunately, forests and water catchment areas have been turned into housing estates, or used for industry or agriculture," it says.

The report claims that nearly 7,000 large-scale industries, some 15,000 small to medium enterprises, and about 240,000 household industries are contributing to the pollution of the nation's air and water.

The state of the environment report also reveals that the condition of forests in the country has entered a critical stage due to legal and illegal logging, forest fires, legal and illegal mining in forests, as well as the conversion of forests into housing estates or plantations.

The Ministry of Forestry's MS Kaban expressed hope for a revival of the forestry industry in a bid to turn it into a revenue generator for the nation. His remarks sparked protests from environmental activists.

Data from the report reveals that some 43 million hectares of the nation's 120 million hectares of forests have been damaged. Every year, an additional 2 million hectares of forest are damaged.

The World Bank has predicted that all lowland forests in Sumatra will have disappeared by next year, and in Kalimantan by 2010.

Water and forests are amongst the most important elements of the environment, and this is particularly critical for Indonesia because of its very large population.

The government currently gets US$379.81 million in taxes and non-tax revenues annually from the 13 mining companies, which employ 47,269 workers. They also get millions of dollars more from water and logging business.

But, in the words of former environment minister Emil Salim, the government cannot keep implementing "live for today" policies.

Emil is a staunch advocate of sustainable development.

The money the government must spend to deal with problems generated by environment destruction may well exceed the profits of natural resources exploitation.

Severe drought, caused by, among other things, deforestation, causes crop failure to nearly 300,000 hectares of some 10 million hectares of rice fields.

Whilst droughts did not create a domestic rice supply problem -- Indonesia simply imported more rice -- it did impoverish millions of farmers, experts said.

The crop failure of 300,000 hectares could potentially put some 1.2 million families into poverty.

Last year, the government allocated Rp 1.2 trillion for the reforestation of some 3 million hectares of damaged forests throughout the country.

"If we keep up these live for today policies, then the nation's future generations will potentially inherit conflict." Emil warned.