Neglect in preserving biodiversity hurts wealth

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia is losing much of its natural wealth because the government has paid more attention to productivity than to the sustainability of nature's biodiversity, says State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja.

"Monocultural activities, which conceal various inherent problems, are at present regarded as the key to the successes of our development," Sarwono said yesterday in a seminar on biodiversity held by the National Consortium for Nature and Forest Conservation in Indonesia (Konphalindo).

That attitude, he said, makes the difficult struggle to protect Indonesia's biodiversity -- which some would like to call mega-biodiversity -- even harder.

The minister said there was no or little awareness of the importance of biodiversity among government officials and, thus, little effort to protect it. Moreover, those who are aware of the problems seldom put their concerns into action.

Taking concrete action is difficult, he said, because it is at odds with those in the mainstream who still think they can succeed without paying attention to biodiversity and only to productivity.

"We boasted that our fishery industry grew well, that salt water fish exports have increased 51 percent," Sarwono cited an example. "At a glance (the figure) is impressive but the question is where the fish came from and how they were caught."

He said Bung Hatta University in West Sumatra found out in a recent study that 71 percent of the coral reef in the province has been damaged. Of its western islands, only one has been spared from the damage and that is because there is no landing site there.

"There is no proper management for sustaining marine environmental functions," he said. "There is statistics of the products of exploitation, but not the damages it causes."

There has also been considerable damage of the ocean environment by bombing, poisoning, waste dumping, and sand excavation, he said, but there are no quantifiable reports, only laments.

Citing other examples the minister said that, of the original 13 million hectares of mangroves in the country, all that's left is a mere two million hectares.

Sarwono said that only in recent years have policy makers started to realize that mangroves are rich zones. For years mangrove forests were cut down to make way for monocultural development of paddy and shrimp farms.

Seribu Islands

There is an island resort in Seribu Islands where the management cut down all the mangrove trees so that tourists could have a place to swim, he said.

Even local people, who for generations have lived near the mangroves, could not name more than two or three species of the trees, Sarwono said. They are interested only in using them as fire wood.

Sarwono calls on all parties to think of the future and not be satisfied with the current success, which may prove to be only temporary.

He urged economists to pay more attention to the preservation of the natural resources. As an example of the lack of foresight, Sarwono sited several pulp and paper factories who used bamboo as raw material and used up bamboo reserves in only a few years. This was because they knew how to exploit but not how to manage sustainable way, he said.

The seminar was held to launch Indonesian translations of two new books: Indonesian Country Study on Biological Diversity (Keanekaragaman Hayati di Indonesia), a report prepared by Indonesia with the help of Norwegian government for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and The Earth Summit's Agenda for Change (Bumi Lestari Menuju Abad 21) by Michael Keating, a popular version of the Agenda 21, the blueprint on how to manage a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable development as adopted by the Earth Summit. (smb)