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.