Ministry lacks power, not cash: Walhi

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Increasing the allocation in the state budget for the Office of the State Minister of Environment would not help much, an environmentalist claimed on Wednesday, responding to the state minister for environment's complaint about having the lowest budget in Southeast Asia.

"What is the use of having a big budget if the state ministry has no power? Its duty is to coordinate with other ministries to formulate environmental-friendly government policy. To this point, it has failed to do such a thing," the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi) executive director Chalid Muhammad told The Jakarta Post.

Chalid said even with the amount of money in the current budget, the ministry should be able to do more to protect the country's rich natural resources.

"The problem is that it lacks power, not money," he said.

State Minister for Environment Rachmat Witoelar stated earlier that his institution only were allocated 0.1 percent of the 2005 state budget, the lowest such allocation among Southeast Asian countries.

"It is even smaller that Vietnam's environment ministry gets, which is at 6 percent of the state budget," he said on Tuesday during his visit to Makassar, South Sulawesi.

Rachmat also cited examples of other countries like China and Germany, which spent about 5 percent of their state budget on the environment.

The ministry's budget for this year totals Rp 218.1 billion, or 0.1 percent of the 2005 state budget. Under the proposed 2006 state budget, the ministry will get a bit more (Rp 281.3 billion) but that is still around 0.1 percent of the state budget.

Former environment minister Sonny Keraf, however, pointed out that other ministries also had their own budget allocations for environmental issues.

"What the minister said is not entirely correct. Almost every ministry has a budget allocation specifically for environmental- related issues. For example, the ministry of education has a huge budget for environmental education programs," said Sonny, who is also a member of the House of Representatives Commission VII on environmental issues.

If such a variety of funding was pooled, he said, it could reach almost 5 percent of the state budget.

However, he acknowledged that the budget allocation for the state ministry should ideally reach between 5 percent and 6 percent of the state budget.

"That's why the commission VII has proposed an increase of the ministry's budget by Rp 113 billion for next year," he said, adding that the 2006 state budget would be finalized on Friday.

Sonny stressed that the money should be spent not merely for promotion and campaign programs, but also for concrete and measurable programs, such as cleaning up rivers in major cities across the nation or rehabilitating mangrove areas along the Java and Sulawesi coasts.