Walton goes, hopeful to the last

Walton goes, hopeful to the last

Megan James, Contributor, Jakarta

After more than a decade in any job, being unable to note any
improvements in your chosen field might depress some career men.
But not Tom Walton, the outgoing Environment Coordinator for
World Bank projects in Indonesia, who's been at the front line of
Indonesian environmental problems for 13 years, eight of them
resident in Jakarta.

"Since I came in 1991, things like air and water quality in
Indonesia have become worse or stayed the same," says Walton.
"But I still have great hope for Indonesia. Firstly, I think the
spirit of the people is one of the country's great strengths.
Secondly, its natural resources are immense. Even though they've
been plundered, there is a lot left. It's not too late if people
are willing to reverse trends and make the effort."

Tom's easygoing, generous spirit has sustained his optimism
through a decade where Indonesia faced new kinds, as well as new
degrees, of environmental stresses.

So as he leaves his post, how's his final report card on
Indonesia's environment?

In his view, the number one environmental problem now is not
forestry or mining, but urban air quality. That's because the
rapid decrease in air quality in the last decade (thanks largely
to millions more vehicles on the roads) affects the health of
many more millions of people, rich and poor alike.

It's so bad, according to Walton, it's no longer a matter or
sore throats and headaches. The carbon monoxide, ozone,
hydrocarbons and sulfur particles in exhaust emissions have
caused "epidemics" of serious respiratory diseases, including
cancer, in thousands of towns and cities across Indonesia.

In Jakarta, leaded petrol has been phased out, but most
vehicles have not installed catalytic converters to clean up
other emissions,

That's because outside Jakarta, leaded petrol is still the
order of the day, despite promises that all Indonesia would be
unleaded by 1999.

Until then, millions of children in these towns and cities are
consuming levels of lead that could impair their mental
development.

"People have estimated the health costs in the hundreds of
millions of dollars per year caused by air pollutants. They don't
know they're paying it. The government certainly doesn't take it
into account when they say we can't afford to do things about air
pollution, such as saying they can't phase out lead in gasoline
any faster than it's being done."

Number two subject on Walton's environmental report card is
water quality, but the score is no higher.

About a third of the pollution in Indonesia's urbanized
waterways comes from industrial waste.

In the early 1990s standards and control procedures were set.
Most industries agreed to reduce pollutants and install treatment
plants.

But in Walton's experience, many industries only turn them on
when they get the tip the inspector's coming, because of the
expense of running them.

"You can have regulations in place and plants built, but if
the inspector just comes and gets a bit of money, you're
accomplishing nothing. That happens a lot."

However, even if industrial pollution were controlled 100
percent, this wouldn't visibly improve water quality, because
two-thirds of the pollution in Indonesia's urban waterways is
from household waste, mostly sewage.

This, despite the fact that 98 percent of Jakarta's residences
rely on septic tanks, which should mean sewage does not get into
waterways.

The problem, says Walton, is that Jakarta is not a good city
for septic tanks.

"A lot of Jakarta is wet and low. The soil doesn't have the
capacity to absorb enough liquid, so sewage from the tank runs
off into drains, waterways and cross-infects people's wells," he
says.

"My septic tank has not been pumped out for 7 years.
Ordinarily you'd pump the solids every year or two, so the solids
are going somewhere else and that's very polluting."

Looking back, he says his greatest frustration over his years
here has been lack of leadership on environmental issues. He
would like to see leaders admitting, for instance, that air
quality is intolerable, and telling ministers to stop making
excuses and commit themselves to working together for a visible
improvement with each new year.

He admits that's easier said that done, especially in a
governmental culture that's more often 'please-the-boss'
hierarchical than 'let's cross disciplines' horizontal.

"But it simply has to happen in environmental management,
because in areas like forestry and fisheries there are so many
agencies. They need to get involved and they can't just be
allowed to go on ignoring the fact that they have mutual
responsibilities."

If it doesn't start happening from the top, Walton still holds
hope that the community will lead environmental change from the
bottom. He wants the public to become so aware of the problems
that people demand a better environment.

Despite plenty of public education programs funded by the
World Bank and many NGOs, he admits this too is a long way off.
There are already beginnings, though. The World Bank, along with
a team from Johns Hopkins University ran a "social marketing
campaign" in fishing communities encouraging preservation zones
of coral reefs.

"They did entry and exit surveys at end of their 3-year
project, showing a measurable difference in people who understood
why a coral reef is important and there were reductions in
destructive practices. So it's a long way to get there, but it
seems to be the necessary way," he says.

"The other hope I have is that these small projects can be
scaled up. The World Bank's advantage is that we can do large
things if people are willing to borrow the money from us."

As he returns to Washington this week, Walton says he'll
greatly miss life in Indonesia, despite the disappointments of
the last decade. And a final word to the nation he's grown so
fond of?

"A former Japanese Environment Minister told me that post-war
Japan, in the 1950s, made a decision to grow now and clean up
later. That, he said, had been a very expensive decision and he
did not recommend it to any other nation."