Tony Hotland, Jakarta – Green activists renewed their calls Tuesday for more attention to be paid to environmental preservation and economic compensation for those whose lives have been affected by the exploitation of natural resources.
Environmental justice, they said, is a term Indonesia's laws do not yet wholly accommodate and that those which do address environmental issues are faltering in practice.
The term infers that no group or individual should face the consequences or environmental impacts of industrial, commercial or governmental operations.
The key aspects of environmental justice include the universal right to a safe and healthy workplace; to full compensation in the case of an environmental imbalance and to thorough education on social and environmental issues.
Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi) researcher Rino Subagio said the continued desertion of the environment in favor of business interests was a "crystal-clear" illustration that the government had yet to fully grasp the long-term effects of environmental degradation.
"Those who suffer in the end are the people around the exploitation site, who are not informed and have no technology or protection from the environmental impacts," he said at a Walhi-organized discussion.
Despite living in regions with huge natural resource reserves such as gold and oil, Indonesians in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam and Papua remain among the country's poorest, he said. "There is not an even distribution of natural resources and the subsequent financial benefits to marginalized people," Rino said.
Critics charge that past and current administrations have consistently put environmental protection on the back burner, instead choosing to pursue oil reserve exploitation and mining projects.
"In what used to be a mining site, for instance, is mostly now a ghost city because the environmental condition is no longer supporting the economy," said Walhi researcher Raja Siregar.
Environmentalists also agree that the government's failure to ensure that post-exploitation plans are implemented by "extracting companies" has been a factor in the disintegration of communities.
Citing allegations of mass pollution by American mining giant Newmont in North Sulawesi's Buyat Bay, Raja said the government had failed to monitor and reprimand the corporation despite discovering increased toxin levels in the bay's water.
"The panel of judges did not accept that finding, arguing that the government never reprimanded or imposed a sanction on the company," he said in reference to an April 24 verdict by the Manado District Court that acquitted Newmont and its chief executive Richard Ness of charges over the allegations.
A way to uphold environmental justice, Raja said, was to thoroughly inform people living in areas of environmental exploitation of the project plans for their region.
"I'm sure that all mining firms operating in Indonesia, or the government as a matter of fact, have never openly discussed with the people in the area in question what and how they're going to do with the site from the beginning until the end," he said.