Indonesian Packaging Association held their annual gathering at the Bali Beach Hotel in Bali last week. Little Tree attended:

We brought over Robert Bobroff who is a degradable plastic expert from d2w in England to help us give a presentation about how most of the plastic presently used here could be made using degradable plastic. The big floating plastic Island in the Pacific would not be there if the plastic in it was made from degradable plastic. Of course in even using degradable plastic we still have to use the 4 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Responsibility…

Plastic is a big issue in Bali…

Despite recent criticism about severe land and water pollution, Bali has the best environment of all of the provinces, a government study shows.

The report on Indonesia’s environmental quality index in 2010 conducted by the Environment Ministry showed that Bali had a score of 99.65, the highest of all the 33 provinces.

The score takes into account the level of total suspended solids (TSS), dissolved oxygen (DO) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) — common parameters to measure water quality.

The province ranked third in the ministry’s previous review.

“Changes in the index for every region is determined by the amount of polluting substances and water volumes of its rivers,” said the report, officially launched last week.

The parameters also explain whether the water in the area could be utilized for drinking water or for other purposes such as irrigation, aquaculture, farming or water recreation.

International media have reported that Bali is no longer the “Island of Gods”, citing heavy polution.

Time magazine reported that Bali was a dirty and unsafe tourism destination.

“Rivers swell and flush their trash and frothing human waste into the sea off Kuta Beach, the island’s most famous tourist attraction, where bacteria bloom and the water turns muddy with dead plankton,” the report said.

It listed tap water shortages, blackouts, uncollected trash, overflowing sewage, traffic congestion and crime as major problems on the island.

The Culture and Tourism Ministry, however, has denied the accusations of poor management and tourist overload in the province.

The Bali administration has set a target of creating 130,686 hectares of green space on the island, which is 5,780 square kilometers in area.

The environment report, which was released for the second time this year, showed that Jakarta was the worst performer.

The nation’s capital, which is also the most densely populated region in the country with an average of 14,460 inhabitants per square kilometer, maintained its spot at the bottom of the list with a score of 41.81.

Of its total area of 664 square kilometers, Jakarta has only 571 hectares of green space, compared to Bali’s 176,547 hectares.

A recent survey conducted by the Clean Air Initiative (CAI) concluded that Jakarta was one of the cleanest cities in terms of air pollution, along with Bangkok, Hanoi, Jinan and Manila.

Deputy minister for environmental communications and people empowerment affairs Henry Bastaman said that 19 provinces scored higher than the national average on the environmental quality index.

The report showed that Sulawesi was the cleanest island, and that Java was the least clean.

“This proves that the environmental quality of Java is still the worst compared to other islands,” the report said.

The ministry has said it wants the environmental quality index report to be used as the basis for the argument that development programs should be focused outside of Java, as Java is too densely populated and burdened by manufacturing.

Infrastructure development in the country is also largely focused on Java.

The island generates up to 20,000 cubic meters of trash daily and 75 percent is left uncollected on the roadside and at illegal dumps, posing a mounting problem and health hazard to the surrounding
community.

“On a daily basis around 15,000 cubic meters of trash does not end up in the official government-owned final garbage dump facility. Instead, trash is strewn along the roadsides, alleys and at illegal waste disposal sites,” provincial environmental agency head Alit Sastrawan said.

The garbage agency’s lack of sufficient human resources and equipment was one reason behind this chronic trash problem. Yet, Sastrawan also blamed the public’s low awareness on good trash management as an aggravating factor.

“A large number of people still think they can dump their trash anywhere,” he said.

He added that trash had become one of the most crucial problems in Bali.

“Trash has disturbed our social and spiritual life, and it has also impacted on our economic sources, the tourism industry in particular,” Sastrawan said.

He cited Andrew Marshall’s story “Holiday in Hell: Bali’s Ongoing Woes”, published in Time magazine in early April, as an example of the negative effects poor trash management inflicts on Bali.

The story portrayed Bali as a place that is gradually losing its charm as a friendly and desired holiday destination due to scores of problems the administration and the Balinese have yet to address effectively.

Trash, traffic jams and crimes were mentioned in the story as the island’s pressing problems.

Sastrawan said that Bali would follow the steps taken by the Singaporean administration in dealing with the trash problem. One of those steps was stronger law enforcement.

“The provincial administration has finished drafting a bylaw on trash and has submitted the proposed bylaw to the provincial legislative council. The council is currently still deliberating the bylaw,” he said.

Once the council passes the bylaw, the administration will have legal ground to take firmer action against individuals who discard their trash in careless ways or at illegal sites.

The administration is also to construct a high-end waste disposal facility to replace the current landfill at Suwung in South Denpasar.

Suwung landfill’s outdated technology and limited capacity cannot cope with the rising amount of garbage from the island’s four regions.

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• Amy Chavez: Bali Paradise? Hell Yes! (huffingtonpost.com)

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