Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – The government and private firms both continue to block public access to information about environmental problems and this tends to exacerbates ecological disasters in the country, a study finds.
The study found that limited public access to information on the environment made people less prepared to cope with the impacts of man-made disaster.
"One factor behind ecological disasters is lack of public participation in making decisions on environmental projects, said Rino Subagyo, executive director of the Indonesia Center for Environment Law (ICEL), told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
And the public isn't able to participate in decision making, he said, because "they have a very limited access for the information".
The study, a joint effort by ICEL and the office of the State Minister for the Environment, was carried out in Riau, West Kalimantan, East Java, Central Sulawesi and North Sulawesi from April 2007 to January 2008.
"The mud flow case in Sidoarjo (East Java), leaving thousands of people homeless, (represents the consequences of) limited public access to information about the drilling activities of PT Lapindo Brantas Inc.," according to the study.
The study reported mud flow victims' claims to have been kept in the dark on the mineral exploration activities of Lapindo – controlled in part by the family of welfare chief minister Aburizal Bakrie – beginning with the early licensing processes when the company was required to provide certain information to people living in the vicinity of the planned drilling.
"People weren't able to reject the exploration project. There was no way they could give input to either the government or Lapindo about (potential) preventive measures," said Rino.
"To make it worse, even after the mud flow hit them, access to information remained limited. The residents had to seek information from the media."
The study also found access to information about air quality limited in the surveyed provinces. "Information on air quality is very important for the public and the government to determine efforts to improve it. But data displayed for the public in those provinces, including Riau, doesn't represent actual conditions since air monitoring stations are placed in different areas."
The study found public participations in decision making related to environmental projects remained weak. For example, many private companies fail to fully account for the public interest during the pre-development environmental impact analysis (Amdal) process, according to the study.
Rino said the government and project developers had obligations to give people information about environmental decision making in Indonesia.
The 1992 Rio Declaration on Earth – to which 170 countries including Indonesian adhere – obligates signatories to provide such access. "The government has issued a number of (access to information) laws and policies.... But they lack specificity," Rino said, referring to, among others, a 1999 environmental management law and a 2007 law on disaster management.