Gusti Muhammad Hatta, the Minister of the Environment, has voiced his full support to a program of the provincial government’s “Bali Clean and Green” – especially in the control of trash in Bali.

According to the State News Agency Antara, the Minister, who spoke at a press conference launching “Bali Clean and Green – Stakeholder for Solutions Forum” at the Harris Resort Kuta on Friday, July 1, 2011, said: “The Ministry of the Environment completely supports the government of Bali’s program, particularly as it applies to the perpetual problem of trash. It is for this reason that I have come to Bali.”

The Ministry has formulated trash control policies and is working to educate the public on the need to reduce waste and handle trash correctly.

Governor Pastika said he hope that community leaders would not merely make a show of their desire to make Bali clean and green, but take concrete steps to save Bali’s environment. “I hope this movement will be the first giant step. We don’t need to debate; let’s get to the core of the issue,” said Pastika.

The governor called on the public to reduce the use of plastics, by reducing their use of plastic bags by one piece per day, and by demonstrating their commitment to cleanliness by throwing trash in the correct place.

Said the governor: “Reducing the use of plastic by one piece per day can be very meaningful. We have to force people to stop making the use of plastic a part of their lives. If we force them now, later it will become a habit.”

The governor said a provincial law on trash has been written and is awaiting ratification by the provincial House of Representatives (DPRD-Bali) and final implementation.

The Bali Clean and Green Multi-Stakeholder Group is an alliance comprised of non-government organizations, local communities, and businesses. The groups are supported by the chief of Bali Environmental Agency (BLH-Bali), A.A.G.A. Sastrawan.

The potential of consistent future growth on the back of rich resources, expanding domestic consumption and commendable resilience in international export markets is correctly pointed out.

Equally areas where there is a lack of competitiveness such as infrastructure woes or higher education inadequacies are also being pointed out.

The BRIC (Brazil-Russia-India-China) countries have been growing impressively for over two decades while South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia and a few others have made a deserving claim to be considered as part of the BRIC plus group since the turn of the century.

Various aspects of their competitiveness are being assessed such as soundness of their banking systems, integration with globalized economies, policy reforms, development of capital markets and others.

However, another vital barometer for economic progress needs to be increasingly debated — the case for ethical competitiveness. This issue is to be examined from two dimensions — internal to the country and external in terms of benchmarking with best practices seen in developed countries.

The internal dimension is best understood by referring to a quotation from former US president, Theodore Roosevelt, presciently made in 1900 “The biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people.”

Fortunately, the winds of democracy have been sweeping at various speeds across some key emerging markets and for open societies having access to free flow of information the Roosevelt Test can be applied.

Are corporations in these emerging markets being held to the same standards of compliance as are the hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens?

Are companies able to fix the system, perpetuate oligopolies and unfairly rig outcomes in capitalist models increasingly prone to manipulation and distortion?

There is no doubt about the growing clout of the corporate sector of emerging markets and in some notable instances this is also now increasingly seen as an instrument of economic empowerment for surrounding communities and clusters.

The trends pointing to wider adoption of corporate social responsibility practices, expansion of philanthropic activities and emergence of social entrepreneurs are to be encouraged and socialized further.

However, there is also a growing sense of alienation over the appearance of one set of rules for the corporate sector and another for the populace.

From tax planning to debt restructuring to land acquisition at throwaway prices to industrial accidents to environmental degradation to insider trading to disproportionate access to scarce resources like water to the ability to ride out of scandals with nominal consequences — there are several black sheep in the corporate sector that appear to routinely get away with serious acts of omission and commission.

There are two major reasons for the lack of internal ethical competitiveness. The first relates to the continued complexity, duplication, confusion and obfuscation of rules and regulations.

Misconduct and corruption thrives in the gray zone and one of the areas of serious weakness in the BRIC plus emerging markets is the lack of regulatory clarity.

Urgent steps need to be made to simplify regulations and using the transformative power of IT, make these fully and freely available.

Simplified, commonsense regulations will help eliminate fixers and middlemen. When multiple interpretations are eliminated compliance will be facilitated.

The second relates to improving enforcement capability and consistency. White collar crime is an ugly reality of modern societies and regulators need to be on top of their game in detecting violations and prosecuting with speed and uniformity.

The old excuses of untrained judiciary, inadequate enforcement manpower, underdeveloped systems or outdated laws have no credence in countries that are members of G20 or have aspirations to change the global economic order.

The growing currents of protectionism and misplaced nationalism when it comes to adoption of higher industry standards also need to be guarded against.

While emerging countries justifiably need time to catch up on higher standards relating to wages, anti discrimination, carbon assessments and mitigation or sector sustainability the trend must be towards progressive convergence with internationally acceptable practices.

Lowering the bar by rigidly sticking to laggard local standards is unsustainable as markets open up.

Unnecessary talk of foreign conspiracies and non trade barriers distracts from the need to get one’s own house in order.

If the Indonesian mining, paper and palm oil industries balance resource development with strict controls on the environment then the real beneficiaries are Indonesian citizens not Euro ‘greens’.

Likewise, if garment, shoes and furniture exporters are held accountable for minimum wages, prevention of child labor etc. benefits first accrue to the Indonesian workers rather than to global brands.

External ethical competitiveness has to do with benchmarking of ethical practices with peer country standards.

Thus, as an example the government needs to undertake a serious review of the ethical competitiveness of state oil and gas company Pertamina with peers like Petronas of Malaysia, Petrobras of Brazil, Petro China and Indian Oil.

This should cover key aspects like procurement integrity, financial transparency, independent oversight and environment, health and safety compliance.

Since Indonesian SOEs continue to dominate the corporate landscape robust benchmarking will help them reform and prepare better for the competitive times ahead. Their owners, who are ordinary taxpayers, will welcome efforts aimed at improving performance — financial as well as ethical.

The same applies to the private sector which despite some shining examples also has serious catching up to do.

The pace needs to quicken since scandal weary societies are running out of patience on unchecked ethical compromises.

The columnist is CEO of international strategic advisory firm IndonesiaWISE which is also co-lead on a pioneering emerging markets focused project tracking trends in environment, social and governance in the corporate sector. Insight appears on the second Saturday of each month.

“Bali is under threat of becoming the victim of its own tourism success story. The high growth of visitors every year has strained the island’s resources and infrastructure beyond its limits,” Peters said.

He said tourism has driven the island’s economy in a positive way with statistics showing a 16 percent rise in the provincial GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in 2006-2008, but this was offset by negative factors such as vastly increased visitor numbers.

“Over the years, Bali GDP has grown as a result of the development of tourism activities. Tourism has grown significantly,” Peters said.

The number of foreign visitors to the island had dramatically increased from 1.3 million in 1997 to 2.4 million in 2009. But this had produced negative impacts on the environment and natural resources.

“The character of tourism has changed over the years. Although Bali is still a luxury destination, with its 200 five-star hotels, mass tourism has resulted in hotel developments of hotels all along the southern coastline,” Peters said.

“The increase in absolute tourist arrivals and the associated rise in the number of hotels have triggered a number of effects that are harming the environment and the attractiveness of Bali as a tourist destination.”


Obvious examples of environmental degradation were increased air and water pollution, decreasing forest cover and cuts to agricultural areas.

The one-day seminar, organized by Tri Hita Karana Foundation and the Bali provincial government, was part of the government’s Clean and Green Bali Campaign and Green Province programme.

Gede Ardhika, former minister of culture and tourism and a member of the ethics code committee at the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, said some Balinese were misinformed about what the word tourism meant.

“Some think it means luring as many visitors as possible to generate income for the people and the island’s tourism industry,” he said.

Bali has tremendous local wisdom including Tri Hita Karana (the harmonious balance between nature, people and culture) in protecting its culture and environment. So tourism must be developed by using this harmonious and centuries-old tradition if we want to build green tourism.

He added: “In reality, tourism benefits a small group of people and investors while destroying the island’s environment and traditions.”

Another speaker, Ketut Gede Dharma, a member of the Centre for Environment Studies at Udayana University, said tourism’s contribution to deteriorating Bali’s environment was obvious.

“Beaches in South Bali have been heavily polluted. This requires efforts from all stakeholders in the community to improve environmental conditions in Bali,” he said.

http://www.thebalitimes.com/2010/12/13/new-warnings-sounded-over-too-crowded-bali/

Related articles

• Bali’s Travel Boom: Eat, Pray, Love Tourism (time.com)
• Bali beckons ‘literary tourists’ (search.japantimes.co.jp)
• Bali fears for its cultural heritage as tourists flood into Indonesia (guardian.co.uk)

The five-year pilot project backed by India, Mexico and other nations aims to embed nature into national accounts to draw in the full benefits of services such as coastal protection from mangroves or watersheds for rivers that feed cities and crops.

“We’re here today to create something that no one has tried before: a global partnership that can fundamentally change the way governments value their ecosystems,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick told reporters in the Japanese city of Nagoya.

More than 100 ministers are in Nagoya for a UN meeting that aims to seal a historic deal to set new 2020 targets to combat the rapid loss of plant and animal species from deforestation, pollution, over-hunting and climate change.

One of the targets before the ministers is to agree to include the values of biological diversity into national development plans, or possibly national accounts.

“For economic ministries in particular, it’s important to have an accounting measure that they can use to evaluate not only the economic value but the natural wealth of nations,” Zoellick told Reuters in an interview.

“It’s not a silver bullet. It’s a way of trying to help people understand better in economic terms the value of natural wealth.”

While economists try to get a handle on the value of nature, scientists are struggling to get a full picture of the variety of wildlife species around the globe as climate change, exploitation and pollution threaten “mass extinctions”, a series of studies published on Wednesday showed.

Envoys at the Japan meeting, the product of years of negotiations, are trying to win agreement on a 20-point plan that aims to protect fish stocks, fight the loss and degradation of natural habitats and conserve larger land and marine areas.

Greater financing from rich nations, possibly through redirecting subsidies from the fossil fuel, fishing and other industries is key.

Envoys are also aiming to clinch by Friday a new pact that sets laws for the sharing of genetic resources between governments and companies, such as drug and agri-resources firms.

Poorer nations want greater controls to protect their environment and to potentially earn billions of dollars in extra revenue from the benefits of trees to fungi, insects to frogs.

Delegates and greens say the talks are making progress ahead of Friday’s deadline but were still deadlocked on some issues and negotiations were expected to continue deep into the night.

“There is definitely a positive atmosphere,” Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim told Reuters. “Everyone wants to reach a consensus here.”

The World Bank program will give developing countries tools to help them measure the value and benefits of their ecosystems. India’s Environment Secretary Vijai Sharma said at the launch the tools would make impact assessments more objective when looking at bids by miners or steelmakers to set up operations in India.

David Fogarty and Chisa Fujioka, Reuters, Nagoya, Japan | Fri, 10/29/2010 2:05 PM | The Jakarta Post

The President’s September 2009 announcement the country would cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has placed Indonesia in the limelight.

Many countries and multilateral organizations have been lining up to help Indonesia reach its objective.

Australia, Norway, the UK, the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, France and Denmark have promised to help Indonesia address climate change, notably in the forestry and energy sectors, as well as in activities involving land use.

These countries, along with others, have also taken a growing interest in helping Indonesia, given it is home to the world’s third largest forest area and has substantially increased its energy demand.

Adequate, sufficient and sustainable financing from developed countries and multilateral platforms is required to significantly reduce GHG emissions in Indonesia.

Financial support from these entities is also necessary to signal, in particular to the private sector, the need to shift investment flows towards decoupling economic growth from increasing emissions, and towards a low carbon and climate resilient future.

Providing financial support is a critical factor to ensure a developing country like Indonesia succeeds in fulfilling its voluntary pledge.

However, crucial questions need to be addressed. Firstly, is the current and future financing promised — on top of the government’s own budget — sufficient to meet the costs required to mitigate climate change?

Secondly, how do we make sure this financial support addresses the real and strategic challenges identified to mitigate climate change?

Without a comprehensive assessment of the financial support coming from developed countries, important components might be overlooked and objectives to mitigate climate change may not be reached.

The devil is always in the details.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in its National Economic, Environment and Development Study (NEEDS) for Climate Change estimates the average annual cost of the potential mitigation measures proposed until 2030 at ¤12.84 billion, equivalent to approximately 5.6 percent of Indonesia’s GDP in 2005.

From 2010 onwards, this annual cost of abatement is expected to account for 0.9 percent of the country’s projected GDP in 2030 as a result of Indonesia’s rapidly increasing GDP.

In Indonesia’s Second National Communication (SNC) under the UNFCCC, published by the ministry of the environment, the government committed to implement 54 climate change projects in the next five years, which would cost around US$897 million.

In fact, the government allocated $213 million from the state budget in 2009 toward addressing climate change.
So, combined with the ministry of environment’s budget and the funds allocated to environmental development, the total amounts to $991 million.

Although the figure may seem impressive, it only amounts to 0.013 percent of the central government’s budget expenditure, and only 0.008 percent of Indonesia’s total budget expenditure.

The budget the government allocated toward addressing climate change was also far from the annual costs required to implement potential mitigation measures.

As reported in NEEDS, overseas development assistance (ODA) and climate Multilateral and Bilateral Assistance are expected to contribute around $1.17 billion per year toward climate change mitigation.

These figures — both from the government’s budget and overseas’ support — are far from adequate and sufficient.
Indonesia must convince developed countries they need to increase their financial support — as promised in a number of international forums — to help implement climate change actions in developing countries.

This will prevent much higher costs resulting from inaction, and shift the estimated $1.5 trillion of global annual private sector investment needed to spur a clean energy economy.

Once the private sector has been convinced to throw its weight behind clean energy, there will likely be significant new and additional investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, tackling deforestation and new climate-friendly technologies.

One must also carefully examine the objectives and types of interventions targeted by the financial
support.

Some financial assistance is directly targeted at specific sectors, investing in quick gains or low-hanging fruits.
There are sizeable interests in supporting projects on the ground (e.g. community forestry, REDD demonstration/pilots and micro-financing for rural electricity).

There are indications, however, that financial assistance is still shying away from supporting comprehensive work (i.e. cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholders’ approaches) that could ensure systemic and strategic changes in the country’s development policies, framework, governance and operations.

It is challenging for this country to implement long-term sustainable solutions without involving more sectors, layers of governments and stakeholders.

Trust built across sectors and between all stakeholders will foster synergies, which will prevent efforts from individuals and sectors from canceling each other out.

To reach positive outcomes from climate change actions in this country, it is imperative that any support provided is open, inclusive, transparent and performance-based.

Indonesia must also actively guide programs supported by international public funding to concretely safeguard the global climate, the country’s economy, people’s livelihoods, as well as the country’s ecosystems and biodiversity.

Clear rules and mechanisms are therefore required to show how and where the money will be spent, and how it will be monitored.

In the end, financial support must be sufficient and well allocated. Now, it is up to the country to ensure this happens.

The writer is program director of climate & energy at WWF-Indonesia, and adjunct lecturer at Paramadina Graduate School of Diplomacy. He can be reached at fardiansyah@wwf.or.id

The media bombardment on the global economic crisis has left us in no doubt that the impacts will be deep and far reaching.

Newspapers, radio and television are hammering home the dismal details of how the situation is going to affect jobs, pensions, savings and the like.

But there’s all too little mention of what this might mean for the environment.

My fear is that we are going to allow a financial crisis to turn into a ecological catastrophe. With an election looming, I am concerned that the Indonesian government will be tempted to offer short-term fixes at the long-term expense of the country’s fragile ecosystems.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is going to face his biggest test. He’s long espoused the importance of environmental protection and famously placed Indonesia on the map of eco-responsible states during his passionate interventions at last December’s climate change convention in Bali.

Will he now cut corners on environmental protection as the economic slump sets in? Or will he stand by his principles and continue to implement the much-needed protective measures?

This great nation supports tremendous biodiversity of animal and plant life in its pristine rain forests and its rich coastal and marine areas. Up to 3,305 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles, and at least 29,375 species of vascular plants are endemic to the nation’s more than 17,000 islands.

Indonesia’s stunning natural environment and rich resources however, are facing sustained challenges both from natural phenomena and human activity.

Mounting population pressure together with inadequate environmental management is a challenge for Indonesia that hurts the poor and the economy. Total economic losses attributable to limited access to safe water and sanitation are conservatively estimated at two percent of GDP annually, while the annual costs of air pollution to the Indonesia economy have been calculated at around US$400 million per year.

These costs are disproportionately borne by the poor because they are the ones more likely to be exposed to pollution and less likely to be able to afford mitigation measures.

Natural resource challenges have persisted and become more complicated after decentralization. The forestry sector has long played a pivotal role in supporting economic development, the livelihoods of rural people and in providing environmental services. However, these resources have not been managed in a sustainable or equitable manner.

Turning this situation around requires courage and vision — ideally led by the government — of what a viable and environmentally sound forestry sector might look like.

The country’s administrative and regulatory framework cannot yet meet the demands of sustainable development in spite of a long history of support for policy and capacity development both from within the government and with international donor support.

Indonesia’s ministries concerned with environment and natural resources management have benefited from good national level leadership, and also from an active network of civil society organizations throughout the country that are focused on environmental issues, with significant advocacy experience.

But improving Indonesia’s approach to environment and natural resources management is extremely challenging.

Two reasons account for much of the poor performance. First, despite the substantial investment in environment and natural resources policy and staff development, actual implementation of rules and procedures has been poor and slow due to weak commitment by sector agencies, low awareness in local departments and capacity challenges at all levels.

And awareness about the expected negative environmental impacts of sustained economic growth and the mechanisms for stakeholders to hold government agencies accountable for their performance are weak.

Second, there is little integration of environmental considerations at the planning and programmatic levels, especially in the public investment planning process and in regional plans for land and resource use.

In the main, Indonesia’s environment has benefited from this government’s more committed approach. But there is still a very long way to go. Now is not the time to reduce the efforts to protect this country’s vital ecosystems.

For the sake of nature and the people of this country, we must appeal to the better judgment of the government not to loosen its grip on the vital environmental challenges.

Prudent economic management is surely vital right now. But we cannot allow the problems that have stemmed half a world away on Wall Street to take its toll on Indonesia’s precious environment.

Jonathan Wootliff is an independent sustainable development consultant specializing in the building of productive relationships between companies and NGOs. He can be contacted at jonathan<at>wootliff<dot>com

This website will serve as a collection of news articles, stories & blog posts about the Indonesian archipelago environmental issues.