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."