Indonesia needs a new system that actually allows and facilitates the enforcement of conservation laws
Erik Meijaard Jakarta Globe 10 Nov 15;
Conservation in Indonesia and life vests on airplanes have a lot more in common than you might think. I will explain.
“When landing on water, put on the life vest, and tighten the straps. To inflate the life vest pull the tag; never do this inside the airplane. To further inflate, blow into the red tube. The light will automatically illuminate on contact with water. To attract attention, blow the whistle.”
This announcement rarely fails to amuse me. Every day, one hundred thousand flights take off around the world. Every day, someone will recite the above text, almost like a magic spell or prayer. And we all sit there and stare, with probably quite a few people believing that life vest could actually save their life.
But really, how many people have been saved in the history of commercial aviation by the fact that airplanes have life vests on board? How often do planes make emergency landings on water from which people actually emerge alive with enough sense to put on their life jackets, and blow that whistle? Can we have some stats please?
And even more importantly, aren’t there any more effective measures airlines could take that would significantly reduce the number air crash fatalities? Helmets or air bags for all passengers would certainly prevent injuries in the case of very rough or crash landings. Or maybe giant parachutes could be built into planes, in case they break up in mid-air, so each airplane bit can float back to earth with its own share of the passengers. I guess ejector seats may be a bit fanciful, just in case they go off accidentally and the plane spurts out 300 passengers at an altitude of 10 kilometers.
Anyway, my point is that for over 40 years we have had pretty much unchanged safety instructions and measures in planes. They are like pacifiers, the ones that babies suck on, which lull us into a sense of safety.
Have really all options for increasing the likelihood of survival in a crash been explored, and if so, why were they rejected? Too cumbersome maybe? Or too expensive? Or too likely to worry passengers? -- "Surely if they ask us to wear a crash helmet, something actually could go wrong."
To get back to the main topic of this article, in environmental conservation in Indonesia, we have our own pacifiers. They are called “conservation authorities,” “conservation laws,” “protected areas,” and the like. These are mostly paper concepts that are issued or established to give the impression that all is well and under control.
Indonesia’s rates of deforestation, dewilding of forests and seas, and also its recent spate of fires, clearly show that nothing is under control, and that, in fact, everything in conservation is utterly out of control. Like the life vests, the protected areas, conservation laws, and those that are supposed to enforce them are largely ineffective. They provide the public with a sense that the government has really done its best to protect Indonesia’s extraordinary biodiversity riches.
To illustrate this point, we recently published a study on the rates of deforestation in Kalimantan’s protected areas, timber concessions and plantations. As it turns out, the presence of degraded lands perfectly suited to the development of oil palm is a major driver of deforestation, irrespective of whether a piece of land is called protected or not. You have suitable land for oil palm in a national park, and chances are high someone will actually claim it and plant palms.
If the Indonesian government is ever going to live up to its promises on Green Development and protection of its biodiversity, it needs to move beyond the conservation life vest parable. Like the airline industry needs to think harder about how to save lives, there is an urgent need in Indonesian conservation to reassess what measures could be taken that would really save wildlife, or forests, or seas.
We don’t need more laws, new laws, or changed laws, if the old ones never worked because no one bothered, or felt entitled or empowered to enforce them. We need a new system that actually allows and facilitates the enforcement of conservation laws.
To understand what that new system would be, the government will need to dig deep into its swampy underbelly. Why are laws ignored. Is it corruption within the government? Financial interests within or outside the government that overrule the laws? A total disinterest among government and public in environmental conservation? Or all of them?
To give an example, considering that all previous environmental bans and moratoria have been largely disregarded, calling for a fire ban or a moratorium on peat development is not going to achieve anything unless it is accompanied by: 1) a clear strategy at national and local level on how to enforce those bans; 2) identification of the institutions which will be responsible for enforcement; 3) a clear understanding what will happen to those institutions if they fail in their enforcement task; and last but not least 4) clarity about where those peatlands actually are, so that no one can say, “well, we didn’t know.”
More broadly, we, as the conservation movement, need to urgently rethink our conservation strategies. Why are things not working at all. How can we, for example, lose 3,000 orangutans per year in Indonesia, while we have all those political action plans, Presidential Decrees, donor commitments and the rest of the bla bla disguised as orangutan conservation?
It is increasingly clear that the whole environmental conservation mission in Indonesia is failing in its objectives, year in, year out. Do we want to keep sitting there, staring at the demonstration of the same conservation life vests again and again, or are we going to do something about it?
I call upon the Indonesia conservation community to get together once again to seriously rethink what can realistically be done to stop the rot. We are all so busy running our own shows but we are all together failing in our joint objective to protect Indonesia’s wildlife and environment.
Erik Meijaard coordinates the Borneo Futures initiative.
