'Jargon won't help the environment'
JAKARTA (JP): The environmental jargon churned out by bureaucrats and activists has no meaning to most ordinary people and is therefore unlikely to motivate them into action, Moslem scholar Abdurrahman Wahid said yesterday
Words such as "Sustainable Development", "Agenda 21", "solid waste" and "liquid waste" were created for the convenience of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), bureaucrats and entrepreneurs and are comprehensible only to them, Abdurrahman said, reported Antara.
"Ordinary people only know that the roads their houses on are muddy, or flooded, and they have to stand in buses night and day to get work, and to eke out a living," he told a seminar yesterday on the implementation of agreements from the Earth Summit in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Abdurrahman, chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama and leader of the Forum for Democracy, took a completely different approach to the issue than the experts and activists who reviewed the results of the Rio summit, including the "Agenda 21" document produced at the summit.
Abdurrahman said that rather than talking at length about idealism, those concerned with environmental conservation should really aim at practical measures.
This, he said, would be more helpful to the ordinary people who had to face the bitter life every day.
"They only have one philosophy: how to survive and lead a decent life.
"So let's not indulge in esoteric stuff," Abdurrahman said.
To further illustrate his point, he said a metro-mini (bus) driver had to leave home every day at three in the morning and returned after midnight to a home in a slum area.
"That's reality for most people," he said.
He urged activists, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs to be more sensitive to this kind of social reality. They ought to find "long term solutions to immediate problems", he said.
He said by using jargon in complex theories on environmental conservation, bureaucrats and experts fell into the trap of thinking only in the long term at the expense of the immediate needs of the people.
This is the reason why their proposed solutions often missed the target.
In most cases, the damage to the environment has been done.
"What else is there to talk about if the environment is already destroyed, such as the forests in Kalimantan," he said.
The two-day seminar, opened by the State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja Tuesday, was organized by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).
Other speakers included Sarwono's Third Assistant Surna Djajadiningrat, the chairman of the Indonesian Real Estate Association Edwin Kawilarang, the head of the Environmental Section of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Dewi Motik and Mas Achmad Santosa, an environmental lawyer. (emb)