Neglect in preserving biodiversity hurts wealth

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)