Industrialists to clean up their acts

By Sugianto Tandra

BANDA ACEH, Aceh (JP): State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja told industrialists here over the weekend they had no reason to be complacent about developed countries' failure to include environmental issues in international trade agreements.

"They (the industrialists) shouldn't think that trade can be entirely separated from environmental issues. Efforts to link trade with non-trade issues such as environmental protection can also take place outside the World Trade Organization's mechanism," Sarwono said, recounting his meeting with Aceh businesspeople.

Foreign countries could still use the green consumer movement to force "environmentally unfriendly industrialists" to heed the global issue of environmentalism, Sarwono said.

"This movement can, for instance, boycott the products of the industrialists," he said.

Sarwono said the consumer movement could force Indonesia to prove that its management of tropical forests was environmentally sustainable and responsible.

"As long as we have image problems in that area, we're going to have difficulties marketing our timber products," he said.

Sarwono visited Aceh on Friday and Saturday to launch a campaign to plant 1 million mangroves there. During his trip, he told The Jakarta Post that the government was hoping to empower the Environmental Impact Management Agency, long thought to be feeble and ineffective, with a new environment law.

He was confident the law would give the agency enough authority and clout to catch environmentally-destructive companies.

"Once the bill is passed into law, the agency will have the authority to take legal action against polluters, " he said.

Sarwono said the bill had been scrutinized by the state secretariat, but was yet to be approved by the President before being submitted to the House of Representatives for deliberation.

He admitted his office was often criticized because the agency -- with a mandate to help the President formulate policies to promote the environment, not catch polluters -- was considered weak.

"I can only say those people were barking at the wrong tree," he said, adding that the agency had gone beyond its authority to help the courts snare polluters.

"What we're going to do is refine our non-legal instruments, while the country should be working to improve the performance of its courts," he said.

He cited the Proper program, which investigates, names and publicizes worst polluters, as an example of the agency's non- legal instruments.

The agency, established by presidential decree in 1990, opened in 1991. It is accountable to the President. The agency's tasks include monitoring polluters, which has helped save the environment. The agency also promotes public environmental awareness.

Environmental organizations have often criticized the agency for being too weak to stand up to big polluting companies. When the government responded by preparing a bill to amend the 1982 environment law, they said the document was unprogressive and unlikely to bring change because it barely addressed fundamental problems.

The agency's Proper program is often criticized because it can name polluters but not prosecute them.

When asked if the country needed an environmental court to keep up with increasingly complicated environmental issues, Sarwono said: "There's no guarantee that such a court would help because the key to good environmental management is knowledge, something which everybody can master.

"Without knowledge and commitment, it's useless talking about establishing an environmental court," he said.

If the existing courts had knowledge and commitment they should be able to deal effectively with environmental problems, he said.

"Our legal system is good enough, provided that knowledge and commitment to uphold the regulations are ensured," he said.

The minister denied allegations that the agency had refused public access to Proper program data: "In fact, we're planning to make the data public through the Internet."

He also dismissed environmental organizations' accusations that the government was dealing halfheartedly with environmental issues. But he admitted that not all government officials were as committed to environmental protection.