Population pressure is taking its toll on Indonesia’s already heavily stressed environment, with land degradation and water security the two main concerns, according to the Environment Ministry’s annual review.
The ministry’s 2010 State of the Environment Report, released on Tuesday, covered the topics of water, air and atmosphere, land and forest, coastal and ocean ecosystems, biodiversity, energy, waste and hazardous waste management.
It attributed the increasing number of cases of pollution and environmental degradation to a rapidly growing population, infrastructure development, increasingly consumer-oriented lifestyles, weak enforcement of environmental laws and a lack of officials to enforce them.
“This report is what I like to call a dashboard, an indicator,” Akhmad Fauzi, one of the report’s authors, said at its presentation.
“If you look at a car’s dashboard, you can see the speed, fuel level and other information. It works the same here: The report gives you a snapshot of the state of our environment. It shows you its limits, hence it gives policy makers the data to make decisions based on current conditions.”
The wider picture gleaned from the report, Akhmad said, suggests that the exploitation of the country’s natural resource wealth, which contributes up to 25 percent of state revenue, has resulted in widespread environmental degradation.
Compensating for this damage, he added, will require a massive investment.
The report also highlighted that a growing human population, combined with the inability of the state and private sector to create enough jobs, had led to social and economic problems that in turn were having a direct impact on land and forest degradation.
“The proportion of land in critical condition is increasing, and this means we’re seeing other issues crop up such as water security,” Akhmad said.
“That’s because you need catchment areas to store water, which in our case is forests.”
The report also said there was a higher proportion of critical land in agricultural areas than in forest areas, particularly in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Java, which the authors linked to massive agriculture pressure.
“If planters were not greedy in the economic sense, then there wouldn’t be any problems even if they have large population pressures, as in rural areas,” he said.
“This is different in the big cities, where economic and population pressures are too high, which leads to all these problems.”
Berry Nahdian Furqon, executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), questioned the report’s assertion that population pressure was to blame for putting the environment under strain. He said the exploitation of natural resources to meet growing global demand was a key factor.
“It’s about the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources,” he said. “We extract our own natural resources but they end up being exported, everything from coal, gas, pulp and paper to palm oil.”
He added there also needed to be more stringent enforcement of environmental laws in the future.
“It would be great if everyone was fully aware of environmental issues, but it’ll take a long time to make that happen. So in the meantime, we need to ‘force’ that awareness through strong regulations and strict law enforcement,” he said.
Balthasar Kambuaya, the environment minister, said his ministry was trying to balance the need for environmental stewardship with the need to sustain the country’s economic growth.
“We want achieve 7 percent growth in the GDP [next year], but not at the expense of the destruction of our environment,” he said.
“That’s why all companies need to be diligent about their Amdals [environment impact analysis reports].”
He also urged greater grassroots awareness of the need to restore damaged areas and preserve existing ecosystems throughout the country.
“There are examples at local levels across the country, such as in Surabaya, where residents are to a large extent aware of environmental issues without having to be told about them,” he said.
