Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – Green activists called on the government to use the momentum of the centennial anniversary of National Awakening Day to overhaul its development program along pro-environment lines.
Chalid Muhammad, executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said here Monday that repeated natural disasters such as floods, landslides, droughts, harvest failures and forest fires had worsened the country's poverty rate.
"Our country spends nine months a year managing the calamities of disasters," he said.
Indonesia will commemorate the 100th year of National Awakening Day on May 20. The day marks the time young intellectuals set up Boedi Oetomo, the first national political society in Dutch-ruled Indonesia.
Chalil slammed the government for not making any breakthroughs in reducing ecological disasters. "The leaders seem to forget Indonesia is now in a critical phase of ecological disasters."
He said massive exploitation of natural resources would remain in place in the coming years as many of the government's policies were pro-business.
Chalil referred to the new investment law, which offers tax incentives to investors, and laws on spatial planning and the management of coastal areas and small islands.
Walhi also predicted conservation would continue to be challenged by allowing big-scale plantation firms, mining and oil industries to expand their businesses.
Chalil said the government had issued a new policy allowing investors to manage 100,000 hectares in a province, higher than the previous of only 20,000 ha. The government also provides credit facilities to attract more investors in plantations.
"With such incentives and in addition to the illegal logging, the collapse of our forest will come true," he said.
Walhi has predicted all natural forest located in low-lying areas will be destroyed by 2022.
In the maritime sector, it said the government's revitalization policy aimed at increasing fishery exports would also make the country face a fishing crisis by 2015. "We lost between two and four million tons of fish from poaching per year," Chalil said.
Former coordinating minister for the economy Rizal Ramli said forest deforestation had so far only profited very few people. "In my survey on the deforestation rate in the 1980s, less than 20 people, all linked to former president Soeharto, took benefits from the forest... but many Indonesian people are still poor."
He said the government should shift economic policy from an exclusive system to an inclusive one by involving the public.
Walhi said 90 percent of the country's oil and gas fields were controlled by transnational companies, of which 60 percent went to export. "But more than 37 million Indonesians still lived below the poverty line as of 2007," Chalil said.
To make it worse, he added, more disasters had taken place recently. "We recorded 840 ecological disasters between 2006 and 2007, leaving over 7,303 people dead and 750,000 houses in ruin."