Walhi criticizes city's greening program

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi) has criticized the municipality's plan to green Jakarta, especially by setting free a group of birds, as having no significant beneficial impact on the environment.

"I think setting free a group of birds will not help improve the quality of the city's environment," Chalid Muhammad, head of Walhi's civic education program, said Monday.

Chalid responded to Governor Sutiyoso's setting free of 500 birds Monday to help improve the city's environment despite the fact that Jakarta has a limited number of trees for the birds to live.

Instead of flying high, many of the birds were just eventually captured by people.

"I hope I can fulfill my ambition to green Jakarta in my term as governor," Sutiyoso said at the ceremony in the Cengkareng low-cost apartment complex in West Jakarta.

Chalid said, "It's ironic that the governor set free birds while in fact people like to steal them and put them in cages. The habit of poaching birds -- that's what the municipality has to abolish.

"It will be useless to set free thousands of birds if the mentality (regarding poaching) is not changed," he added.

He said that if the municipality wished to start an environmental campaign in the city, they had to develop an effective environmental policy, consistently implement the regulations and seek voluntary public participation.

"For instance, once a policy is adopted, don't make its implementation only a lip service. The officials have to mean what they say.

"The clean river program, for example, is good. But in its implementation the municipality chose the wrong approach. They evicted all the people living along the river banks, as if they were the cause of the water pollution. That's wrong," he said.

He claimed that it was eco-fascism, meaning that in attempting to create a healthy environment, many sacrifices were imposed on segments of society.

"The municipality should check into who is responsible for water pollution. Don't blame little people as if they were the cause of the pollution."

He also said the city also has to be consistent in applying the rules.

"The municipality is too lenient in enforcing the law. The cases of missing islands in the Thousand Islands, or the disappearance of mangrove forests are just a few examples of how reckless and lenient the city is in enforcing the rules," he added.

Among the birds freed by Sutiyoso, who is also the chairman of the Jakarta Bird Lovers Association, were turtledoves, bulbuls and nightingales.

Sutiyoso earlier freed some 2,000 birds from 10 species at National Monument (Monas) Park, in Central Jakarta.

He said a city as big as Jakarta must be developed into a green city to fight increasing pollution problems. (07)