Low appreciation of conservation: The disastrous results

Wiryono, Consultant, Kerinci Seblat, Integrated Conservation and Development Project, Bengkulu, tnkspm@pdg.vision.net.id

Since the economic crisis hit Indonesia, this country has been suffering even greater losses in biodiversity. Lowland tropical forests, where most plants and animals live, have been vanishing fast. A lack of law enforcement is the biggest factor contributing to this disaster. When the autonomy era began, the threats to forests increased even more. Eager to boost local revenues, local governments often issued forest exploitation permits regardless of the fact that their production forest was exhausted. As a result, the neighboring conservation forests become the target of exploitation.

Having worked for more than two years in a very large project -- the Kerinci Seblat Integrated Conservation and Development Project (KS-ICDP) funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the World Bank and the Indonesian government -- I am pessimistic that the government will be able to guard our invaluable natural heritage. First, the government has not shown a willingness to enforce laws, not only in illegal logging but also in many other cases. Only clean governance can save the forests.

Recently four governors and nine regents whose territory includes Kerinci Seblat National Park (KSNP) signed a declaration to protect it. Regardless of whether the measures are just to attract donors, timber continues to flow out of the protected park. If KSNP, which is currently in the international spotlight and receives millions of dollars cannot stop illegal logging, there is no reason to believe that other much less funded parks can do better.

Also, although conservation started during the Dutch colonial era, the philosophical values and scientific theories underlining conservation have never been thoroughly and widely discussed and clarified to conservation workers. This has contributed to their inability to deal with huge problems.

A most obvious, albeit trivial, indicator of this weakness is the changes of the name of the directorate general in the Ministry of Forestry that is responsible for conservation. That institution has had four names, the last two in four years. Under the Ministry of Agriculture, conservation was under the Directorate of Protection and Preservation of Nature (PPA). When responsibility for forestry came under a ministry of its own in the early 1980s, the office for conservation became the Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Preservation (PHPA). At the end of the 1990s, it changed to the Directorate General of Protection and Conservation of Nature (PKA). Since 2001 it became the Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (PHKA).

The changes reflect authorities' muddled understanding of conservation, leading to confusing laws and regulations -- resulting in turn in confused classification of protected areas.

Act no. 5 1990 on Conservation of Biological Resources and their ecosystems, for instance, distinguishes the functions of natural preservation areas and natural reserve areas. But Government Regulation 68 1998, concerning natural reserve areas and natural preservation area, states that both have exactly the three same functions. However according to the Presidential Decree 32, 1990 on the management of protected areas, national parks belongs to the Nature and Culture Reserved Area, while in the Act no 5, national park belong to the category Nature Preserved Area.

The new law on forestry, Act no 41 1999, separates protection from conservation -- while the two are the same. The absence of a philosophical foundation in conservation work can be blamed for these shortcomings.

In the May edition of the Journal of Environment and History, Paul Jepson explains that during the Dutch colonial era, the establishment of several protected areas was driven by ethical and esthetic values. Ethical values arose from a hunting tradition. Realizing that excessive hunting could cause wildlife extinction, North American and European hunters in the 19th century viewed that human conquest of nature carries with it a moral responsibility to protect threatened animals -- and wildlife sanctuaries were established.

Aesthetical values, developed in natural history tradition, stemmed from fears of destruction of nature. European naturalists in the 19th century argued that the great aesthetical values of natural monuments -- tall waterfalls, great mountains, etc -- deserve protection against ruin, just like works of art.

During the New Order, the government established a network on extensive protected areas, hailed as the most comprehensive in Asia. During the Third World Congress on National Parks in 1982 in Bali, the government announced 18 candidates for national parks. Regardless of the motive, the process was clearly a top down one. People were not involved and the values of protected areas were not made public. Even forestry people outside the directorate general have little appreciation of biodiversity.

Now, sidelined for three decades of forest exploitation, local governments are now eager to salvage what is left in the forest -- and conservation is in their way. They are not happy that control of conservation areas is still under Jakarta rule.

The directorate general cannot expect help from foresters in the district forest offices. Being the most directly responsible party for the forest destruction during the New Order, they cannot instantly turn into conservationists.

Nowadays district forestry offices even threaten conservation areas because they sometimes recommend the regent issue forest exploitation permits. This is happening in Kerinci. The park office is being sued by a holder of a forest-exploitation permit, because the park confiscated his manau (rattan) protected by official documents. The park office believes that the rattan must have been acquired illegally from the park because there is no rattan outside the park.

The Kerinci Seblat National Park is also a good case to show the failure of conveying conservation values to the public. Although the national park was opened since 1982, most laymen in the surrounding four provinces do not know what it is. The term "national park" is understood as a place for recreation.

The term suggests that the place has national significance in terms of scenic beauty -- which is not totally wrong. In 1994, IUCN defined national parks as protected areas managed mainly for ecosystem protection and recreation. Early national parks in the U.S. (where the term is coined) are really beautiful and are outstanding tourist destinations. Most areas of Kerinci Seblat are "just forest" to many people.

Past practices of promoting the park through posters of rare tigers, elephants and rhinos, begging for protection, instead led to the impression that the park was more important to wildlife than people. Also, the promotion of the park as "the lungs of the world" has produced the wrong notion that the park is more important to foreigners than to locals. Local officials have expressed that the world should pay them for protecting the "world's lung".

Although the park is now an ASEAN Heritage Site, and was even nominated as a World Heritage Site, this has not instilled pride among locals or officials.

It is now the task of the directorate general to organize scientists, activists, environment-concerned religious leaders, and conservation workers to start discussing the philosophical and scientific foundations of conservation. Subsequently, laws and regulations on conservation must be revised. Categories of conservation areas must be clearly defined; the 1994 classification of protected areas by IUCN can be adopted.

And unless philosophical and scientific values of conservation are conveyed to field conservation workers, they will not be able to share the understanding with the public and local government.