Next govt should make environment top priority

Next govt should make environment top priority

P.C. Naommy and Sari Setiogi, Jakarta

Environmentalists are up in arms that none of the five
presidential candidates has included the environment as a primary
issue in their campaigns.

"The environment has become a social problem, so it's urgent
for our future leaders to treat it as a political priority," said
Longgena Ginting, executive director of the Indonesian
Environmental Forum (Walhi) ahead of World Environment Day, which
falls on June 5.

Longggena said the degradation of natural resources through
destructive exploitation and the restriction or even the removal
of access for local people to these resources had caused an
increase in poverty in Indonesia.

"About 220 million of the Indonesian people are highly
dependent for their survival on the availability of natural
resources, while 52 percent of the country's income comes from
the exploitation of resources," said Longgena.

He further said that with the rapid degradation of available
natural resources, future leaders must be capable of coming up
with environmentally friendly policies.

Longgena said that while several candidates had made a few
pious, abstract noises about the environment, all had failed to
elaborate on concrete action plans to restore the environment and
institute sustainable natural resource management.

Longgena also said it would be useless to enact more laws and
issue more regulations unless the root of all of the problems
being faced -- corruption, collusion and nepotism -- were
eradicated.

"We already have a money laundering law, a forestry law, and
an environment law, but law enforcement is weak. As it is now,
the law can even be used to legalize the illegal," he added.

He cited cases where it was very difficult to differentiate
between logs that were harvested legally and those which were
felled illegally as fake documents were often provided for the
illegal logs.

Longgena added that in the future, the government should take
the participation of indigenous and tribal people into account by
developing community-based natural resource management in order
to achieve a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Similar comments also came from the Indonesian Environmental
Activists Alliance (Aliansi) and the Public Lawyers with
Environmental Perspectives (PIELs) organization, another NGO,
which urged the government to prove its concerns by properly
resolving outstanding environmental cases.

The NGOs reported that some 66 cases from between April to
October 2000 had been left unsettled, while another 32 cases that
occurred in December 2003 had yet to be settled.

In observance of World Environment Day, a group of private
companies launched the Environmental Action and Recreation for
Humanity -- Earth Project on Friday, with its main programs being
reforestation, rehabilitation of degraded land, returning
protected animals to their habitats and providing training for
individuals.

Project director Sulistya Putra told The Jakarta Post that the
project had been in place since March 8, with the work carried
out to date including the reforestation of some 150 hectares of
forest on Mount Muria in the Central Java town of Jepara.

The Earth Project will reforest another 45 hectares of land in
Jepara, Sulistya said.

To raise funds, the NGO publishes Earthpages, which is
dedicated to companies supporting the program. The publication
contains feature articles on the contributing firms.