NGOs prepare new conservation plans
SERPONG, West Java (JP): Community-based organizations in Southeast Asia are meeting in Serpong to prepare plans of action to strengthen environmental conservation in the interest of traditional communities.
This is the first regional-level effort to implement the 1992 Convention of Biodiversity, and, more specifically, to create recognition of the need for knowledge sharing between traditional communities and outside parties.
The plans of action were formulated at the three-day regional workshop on community-based conservation of biological diversity which began on Thursday. Participants discussed several problems concerning community-based conservation including how to define equal sharing of resources.
"The ideas in the Convention are still too vague," Hamdallah Zedan, coordinator of biodiversity and biotechnology of the United Nations Environmental Program, said yesterday.
"At the very least we must first reach an agreement on the recognition of a community's right to its resources," Zedan said. "After that we can begin to talk of forms of appropriate compensation for a community."
The Convention on Biodiversity was signed by governments participating in the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where Indonesia was a participant.
According to the workshop's organizers, proposed plans of action centered around documenting traditional knowledge and customs of sustainable practices, the inclusion of this knowledge into national regulations and institutions, and the empowerment of communities.
Participants acknowledged that the interests of traditional communities often conflict with those of environmental conservation, and that daily needs often force communities to resort to practices which are detrimental to the environment.
"Campaigning awareness of sustainable practices only works with the provision of viable alternatives that do not hurt a community's livelihood," said Chris Majors of the Washington- based Conservation International who works with the Sama Foundation in Southeast Sulawesi in preserving its coral reefs.
On empowering communities, participants from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and other countries discussed the role of informal leaders, the possibility of abuses of power, corruption at all levels of government and the need of decentralization.
Emil Salim, the chairman of the Kehati Foundation which is hosting the workshop, said the Indonesian government is already decentralizing its administration, not only between central and regional bureaucracies, but also in managing local projects.
He cited the transfer of the Leuser National Park to a foundation, as an example. The foundation aims to rehabilitate Mt. Leuser in Aceh, an area whose flora and fauna population have been endangered by environmental degradation.
Chee Yoke Ling, a Malaysian activist from the Hong Kong-based Third World Network, said another urgent matter for the workshop would be to create a regional code of conduct to monitor practices of corporations.
Such action is needed to prevent further environmental destruction by Southeast Asian companies throughout the Southeast Asian countries in which they operate.
"Our governments voiced a strong stand at the Earth Summit against practices of private sectors in the North that destroy our resources; our companies should not repeat this," she said, citing the practices of a Malaysian logging company in Papua New Guinea.
Setijati D. Sastrapradja of Kehati said the plans of action will be proposed to respective governments and will be partially funded by the Global Environmental Fund. The Fund was set up to implement the Convention.
The results of the workshop will be reported to a team in charge of science and technology, as well as to other teams working on the Convention, which meets in Paris next month. (anr)