Josua Gantan & Vita A.D. Busyra Jakarta Globe 5 May 14;
Jakarta. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in remarks delivered on Monday morning that Indonesia should strive for a balance between protecting the environment and the use of forests by local communities, while Singapore called on Indonesia to take stronger measures.
“It is about striking a balance between the need to conserve the environment and guaranteeing the rights of local communities over their customary forests,” Yudhoyono said in a speech at the Shangri-La hotel in Jakarta, at a Forests Asia Summit 2014 event. “By doing so we provide them with the means to improve their welfare and economic progress.”
He called on all Southeast Asian nations to develop strategies to promote sustainability. The growth in population would contribute to the increasing strain on resources, he said, adding that there would be a rise in demand for housing, transportation, food and energy.
“The central tenet of this strategy is about creating prosperity for everyone, in a way that does not harm the natural environment upon which we all depend,” he said.
Yudhoyono, as the end of his second five-year term has drawn near, said that he hoped that his successor would be able to prolong a moratorium that would last until 2015, protecting more than 63 million hectares of Indonesian forests and peatlands — an area larger than that of Malaysia and the Philippines combined.
He said that through such efforts the deforestation rate had fallen between 450,000 to 600,000 hectares annually between 2011 and 2013, down from 1.2 million hectares per year during the 2003 to 2006 period.
Despite the reductions, deforestation continued at a breakneck speed with little evidence of stopping, and environmentalists have criticized Yudhoyono for failing to act decisively.
The entire Asia-Pacific region has felt the environmental effects of smog and greenhouse gasses emitted by destructive forest clearing techniques, Yudhoyono said, citing the examples of wildfires in Australia, deadly floods in Pakistan and typhoons in the Philippines.
He said that Indonesia would learn from this season’s Riau fires and that illegal burning, logging and farming would not go unpunished — reiterating promises he had made many times before.
“I also call upon governments in Southeast Asia to develop regional strategies, strategies to develop their adapted capacity and to promote low-carbon economy,” he said. “I also urge businesses across the Asean [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] region to commit to sustainable land use and investment practices, to work with governments in enhancing environmental sustainability.”
Fires that swept through Sumatra’s Riau province in recent years as the result of harmful land clearing techniques have caused smog that drifted to Singapore and parts of Malaysia and Thailand, threatening the health of local populations in all four countries and causing nearly 50,000 of cases of respiratory ailment in Indonesia alone, along with widespread school closures and flight delays.
The fires kept Yudhoyono from fulfilling his 2009 promise to cut Indonesia’s greenhouse gases by 26 percent.
‘Should not blame slash-and-burn’
Singaporean minister for environmental and water resources Vivian Balakrishnan, who also spoke at the monday event, lamented the haze’s impact on Singapore and criticized Indonesia for its response and for deflecting the blame onto traditional growers rather than poorly regulated industries
“We cannot and should not blame slash-and-burn traditional agriculture,” he said.
He said local agricultural practices were thousands of years old and that today’s problems were industrial.
In a report by Nigel Sizer from the World Resources Institute, Global Forest Watch found 3,101 hot spots in Sumatra this year, with 87 percent of the fires in Riau and half of them on concessions held by pulpwood, oil palm and logging companies. Some of the largest fires were found on industrial plantations that had committed to eliminating fire from their practices.
Balakrishnan said that people had the right to jobs despite the threat of climate change, but that companies should take responsibility for the environment and commit not to earn profit at the expensive of the environment. He said transparency would breed responsibility.
“Satellites, drones… the Internet… We’ve got to turn those eyes into a system of responsibility that makes people accountable for their deeds,” Balakrishnan said. “Only, and only if we do those things, then can we fulfill the goals that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set just now.”
U Win Tun, Myanmar’s union minister of environmental conservation and forestry, said that efficient use of natural resources was of paramount importance.
As a nation that has underdone rapid political and economic transformation, he said, Myanmar was looking to work with the world community to help reduce deforestation and to strive for sustainable forest management.
The Bogor-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) is organizing the two-day conference, which is one of the biggest gatherings of its kind in recent years, bringing together government officials, business executives, civil society leaders, development experts and some of the world’s top scientists.
BeritaSatu Media Holdings, with which the Jakarta Globe is affiliated, is a media partner of the Forests Asia Summit
