Whoever Wins, Indonesia's Next President Has Important Calls to Make on Land, Resource Use
The boundary between the remaining rainforest and newly developed palm oil plantation over cleared tropical forest land in Central Kalimantan in 2012. (AFP Photo/Romeo Gacad)
I am pretty much an apolitical person. The last and only time I voted was 28 years ago in some random Dutch municipality election of which I understood all but nothing. But that doesn't mean that I am not interested in politics. In fact the opposite is true. I care hugely about political decision-making, especially where it concerns the environment, and even more so in Indonesia, the country I know best.
So Indonesia's upcoming presidential election is a big deal to me. There is a lot to gain or lose with the right or wrong president and associated conservation vision and management style. My Indonesian colleagues tell me that the race has been pretty much narrowed down to three candidates: Prabowo Subianto, Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, and Aburizal Bakrie. There may be others in the race but for the sake of the story I stick to these three.
Who would I favor as the next president of Indonesia for tackling the country's growing environmental and conservation challenges?
I haven't read their political propaganda, but somehow I do not think that the environment and the fate of the tiger or orangutan will feature highly in any of the aspiring presidents' election campaigns. Also, I have met neither Mr. Prabowo, Mr. Jokowi, nor Mr. Bakrie, so I do not personally know their views on the use and management of Indonesia's natural resources. Still, I have a few insights.
As far as I know, Prabowo owned a pulp and paper mill that consumed significant amounts of natural forest. But also, when I was working as a young student in East Java's Baluran National Park in 1992, there were rumors that he intended to take over management of the park, build a hunting lodge on the slopes of Mt. Baluran, and secure the area with Kopassus soldiers.
We hated the thought of red berets in the park, but in hindsight, it might not have been such a bad idea. Since President Suharto stepped down, Baluran's wildlife has been decimated. Where I once walked among herds of 200 wild banteng cattle, now only a handful reportedly survive, with most of the rest presumably having been hunted down. Deer numbers are much reduced, too. Pigs are gone altogether, and one wonders what difference a "strong hand" could have made.
I know very little about Jokowi's conservation credentials. I hear that he has pretty much eliminated the intensely sad sight of Jakarta's topeng monyet or performing monkeys from the city's overcrowded streets. Highly commendable, as far as I am concerned, but still more an issue of animal welfare than one of serious consideration of the sustainable use of this nation's natural resources. Maybe he can also do something about Indonesia's voracious appetite for putting wild-caught birds and other species into cages. After all, Jokowi comes with a forestry degree and should at least have some technical background for weighing up environmental issues.
Then Bakrie. One of his mining companies has provided financial support to the management of a small conservation area in East Kalimantan, where the local community has taken the lead and shown that community development, cultural revival, and human well-being can go hand in hand with conservation. Reportedly, the Lapindo mud flow has tainted Bakrie's environmental reputation. I am not a geologist and cannot judge the extent to which his companies should be held responsible for the Lapindo mudflow. But regardless, the situation on the ground isn't pretty.
Where does this leave me in my personal support for Indonesia's next president? Really, I don't know. But I seriously hope that whoever gets the top spot spends some time thinking about what Indonesia has to gain from careful and informed management of its environment.
The days of easy access to lowland timber, shallow coal and vast shoals of fish are over. Indonesia needs to think hard how it will move towards truly sustainable use of its resources. The president has some say in this, although the trick is to go beyond nice words and translate them into effective change and action.
The incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, made big promises on stopping forest loss, reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and peat conversion, and saving species such as the orangutan. The on-the-ground reality in places like Kalimantan is, however, that very little has changed for the better.
This is the real challenge for the next president: How to guide the country towards land and resource use that is not only based on short-term economic benefits, but also considers the costs of doing this unsustainably?
For example, scientists tell me the enormous impact that land and peat subsidence will have on the geography of Indonesia with large areas of land becoming inundated within the next few decades. This would displace millions of people and destroy vast areas of agricultural land, just because somewhere in the decision-making process the science of land use was entirely ignored.
Those are environmental considerations with major impacts that need to be firmly decided on right now.
It does not need to be a doe-eyed greenie, but whoever wins the presidential race, I really hope that he or she understands that decisions made today have irreversible or very costly impacts later on, and that ignoring those costs is the wrong option for a country like Indonesia. My thumbs up for the next president who gets that.
Erik Meijaard has worked as a conservation scientist in Indonesia since 1992, but actually aspires to becoming a Scottish sheep farmer or Cretan goat herder.
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