Environmentalists have praised the government for issuing a transparent report on the state of the nation's environment, but have criticized it for failing to inform the public of the greater threats the environment is facing – weak regulations and the global economy.
Chalid Muhammad of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WAHLI) said the 2005 State of the Environment report had succeeded in informing the public that the environment was in a critical condition.
However, it failed to show that the government's erroneous perspective on development was a major factor that caused such a situation, he added.
"The report failed to show that environmental degradation, which is bringing about ecological disasters, originated way back to 1967, when the doctrine 'all for development' began," he said.
He believed that legislation passed in 1967 on foreign investment, mining and forestry was very exploitative, allowing giant mining operations and logging concessions to begin operating. That exploitative spirit still colored subsequent revisions to the legislation, he added. "Overexploitation has resulted in ecological disasters – that is unavoidable," he said.
Mubariq Ahmad of the World Wide Fund for Nature Indonesia lamented that the government forgot to put in the "global footprint" of ecological threats in the report.
He cited that world's growing economies, such as China and India, would further degrade our natural resources because they imported a lot of raw materials from Indonesia.
"China's timber industry is growing at a rate of 20 percent per year. Where do you think they get the wood from?," he said, adding that China's hunger for timber would put most of our forests at risk.
He also mentioned the threat of Europe's thirst for biofuel, which would promote more conversion of forests to oil palm plantations.
"The fact is only one day after European governments announced that they would subsidize biofuel, many foreign businessmen went to Kalimantan and Papua to offer investment in oil palm plantations," he said. "Do you think such investment will not cause any harm to our environment?" he asked.