RI's pollution control reflects only half truth of things
RI's pollution control reflects only half truth of things
By Jaseentha L. D'silva
BANDUNG (JP): There can be little doubt that Indonesia's
impressive economic growth rates over the last three decades have
given it a place among the most successful developing economies
in the world today.
Its success, however, has not come without its problems. This
is clearly evidenced by Indonesia's continuing struggle to strike
a judicious balance between economic growth and protection of its
environment.
With a lean towards industrialization and manufacturing
industries to facilitate national growth and development, the
country faces some of the most critical challenges associated
with pollution control.
Effective measures aimed at industrial pollution control must,
in the first place, be based on the magnitude of the pollution
problem itself. Policies must reflect the true nature of the
problem. But trying to determine just how critical the problem of
industrial pollution really is in Indonesia has itself been
fraught with both technical and institutional difficulties.
Although extensive research efforts have already been made to
ascertain industrial pollution levels in Indonesia, only a small
proportion of those efforts have been able to generate reliable
data.
Part of the problem lies in the issues traditionally
associated with pollution control in developing countries --
insufficient knowledge, skills and technology to tackle the issue
at hand.
In industrialized countries, most of the input data for
calculating industrial pollution levels is based on the data of
individual firms, which is normally available in government
departments.
Firms are required by very stringent regulations to disclose
necessary data on their pollution discharge levels to government
on a regular basis. The data is very often subject to
verification by government officials using standard procedures.
Pollution levels are then calculated using the verified data.
In the case of Indonesia, the approach used to determine
pollution levels involves a heavy reliance by government on firms
to provide very accurate data.
For the Indonesian government, the sheer number of
manufacturing firms operating in Indonesia has greatly
exacerbated the problem of creating a large enough pool of
expertise to provide assistance to firms in gathering the
required pollution data.
Added to this is the problem of fluid shifts in manufacturing
emphasis necessitating continual corresponding shifts in
expertise to keep up with new growth trends within the sector.
That said, accurate levels of pollution are without a doubt
difficult to determine: So pollution control policies, at their
best, only partially reflect the true nature of things.
Even bearing in mind this general problem, what data is
available on pollution, coupled with statistics on growth trends,
clearly demonstrates the critical state of things.
In the last 20-year period alone, national industrial output
multiplied eight-fold and the World Bank estimates that it will
expand another 13-fold by the year 2020.
Contributions to national output from the heavily-polluting
manufacturing sector grew from 13 percent in the 1970s to 23
percent in the 1980s, with a projected overall share of 33
percent in the 1990s and 45 percent in the decade following it.
Although World Bank projections suggest that the likely
gradual shifts in the sectoral composition of the manufacturing
sector from the more polluting processing industries to the less
polluting assembly-type industries will help decrease the levels
of certain pollutants, this shift will still not be sufficient to
off-set the pollution generated by the overall rapid increase in
industrial output.
Such a shift in the manufacturing sector of Java, for example,
which is home to about 70 percent of all manufacturing industry,
will only manage to achieve a 10-percent drop in overall
industrial pollution share between now and 2020.
But the reality of the pollution crisis is best captured by
looking at the projections for the absolute levels of industrial
pollution. Assuming everything else is held constant, the Bank
estimates that Java's absolute pollution level, despite changes
to the sectoral composition of its manufacturing industry, will
increase to 10 times its current level over the same period.
Taking into account that many of the industries which are
currently expanding are those which tend to generate some of the
most toxic kinds of pollutants, projected figures for industrial
pollution levels only tell part of the story behind the pollution
dilemma.
For example, 40 percent of the total pollution in Indonesia's
rivers is thought to originate from industrial sources. However,
this figure does not account for the concentrations of many toxic
wastes such as mercury and chromium discharged by firms.
Not only is this an example of a conservative estimate of
pollution levels, but it in no way reflects the far more harmful
industrial pollutants that are increasingly being discharged. And
given industrial growth trends and projections for Indonesia,
World Bank data suggests that such bio-accumulative metals can be
expected to be 50-times higher in 2020 than their levels in 1980.
Thus it is particularly important that results of future
research on pollution capture, not only the real magnitude of the
problem, but the intensification of the pollution crisis as well.
The writer is attached to the Center for Environmental Studies
at the Bandung Institute of Technology.