Green Indonesia

Maya in Antibes has a shop called Saya devoted to trading fairly with local artists, to supporting members of International Fair Trade Association, and to promoting small businesses in Indonesia. That, presumably, is because she’s Indonesian

In her spare time Aya has taken to knitting used plastic bags given to her by people she knows.

She says, “Now it’s easier for me to carry that 1.5 liter of water bottle back and forth, between shop and home.”

So how many francs are you selling them for, Maya?  

Under threat from deforesters and bottom feeding fishing fleets from foreign countries, discoveries of hitherto unknown species continue to be made in Indonesia.

Not far from the Foja Mountains, where a Conservation International team recently discovered a “lost world” of rare plants and animals, another CI-led expedition has found a new trove of extraordinary marine biodiversity in a region known as the Bird’s Head Seascape.

This weekend Conservation International has announced the discovery off the Indonesian province of Papua of ‘epaulette’ sharks that ‘walk’ across the reefs at night on their pectoral fins and ‘flasher’ wrasse, which rise up and down in the water column changing colour into brilliant yellows and pinks as part of their mating display.

Of perhaps even greater importance is that six sites surveyed proved to have the highest diversity of hard corals ever recorded, each with more than 250 species within a single hectare.

Evidence was also found of bomb-fishing used to stun fish that are collected for food, or as bait for the lucrative shark fin industry and cyanide fishing (which) is used to catch live lobster, grouper, and Napoleon wrasse for export to Asian live seafood markets.

The Indonesian government is making appropriate noises.

“We are now closely examining the survey recommendations and may support the development of a network of fisheries reserves in the region to safeguard this priceless national heritage,” says Yaya Mulyana, head of the Indonesian Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Affairs’ Marine Conservation Department.

Green Indonesia will be watching developments closely.

For more information of Indonesian bio-diversity hot spots click here for Sundaland and here for Wallacea.

Al Gore predicts that if we do not reverse our non-sustaining lifestyles within ten years, then our race is doomed.

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

This week in Indonesia has seen more outpourings of mud, in Porong, a kilometre away from Sidoarjo in East Java, site of the original earth burst. This may not have been caused by more human error, as I suggested in Jakartass. Another emerging theory is that the weight of the mud in the retaining ponds is forcing land to rise and split elsewhere. Think waterbeds or air-filled pillows. Whatever, this is an environmental disaster with villains.

However, Green Indonesia is not intended to be a doom and gloom site.

As Dr. Glen Barry writes, “Enough of wallowing in despair that the Earth is dying as kooky fundamentalists wage war. The environmental sustainability movement deserves and needs a dose of healthy skeptical optimism. Until the last human pair gasps their final breathe there is hope of our species’ continued existence and evolutionary advancement, however slim.”

Here in Indonesia, as elsewhere, we can all do our bit according to our capacity, potential, inclination and whatever our station in life. The following are inspiring Indonesian environmental heroes:

Sujana - Bandung
Sujana is the road cleaner in my area. He says that he does not find any big problems with his job. He just feels sad if there are people who are not aware of the importance of keeping the environment clean.

Prigi Arisandi - Gresik, Surabaya
His basic interest in saving is the Surabaya River. He is definitely making a big difference for the river. He and some of his friends made a non-government organization that is called ECOTON which means Ecological Observation And Wetlands Conservation.

Roni Hartanto Gunawan - Bandung
He and his many school fellows planted more than ten thousand small trees in a critical area located near the school.

Suryo Wardhoyo Prawiroatmodjo - East Java, Bali, South Sulawesi and Irian Jaya (Papua).
Suryo’s commitment to environmental education won him a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1990. This brought international recognition after several years during which Suryo had experienced the loneliness of his calling and he was able to finish the Centre for Environmental Education on the slopes of the sacred Penanggungan volcano, in east Java.

Nominations for other Green Indonesian Heroes would be welcome - here.

Residents of major cities in Indonesia may not realise it but the air we breathe is less toxic than it was a year ago. News leaked this week that in July Pertamina has stopped producing leaded gasoline. Apparently it costs an additional US$5 to produce each barrel as lead has to be replaced with another octane booster.

How about producing vehicles which use lower octane fuels? Or practising eco-driving? If drivers were to follow the ten tips given, there could be a reduction of as much as 25% in the fuel used, and discharged as noxious emissions into our air.

This week, a course was held in Cibubur, south of Jakarta, for cement truck drivers. Surely though, it’s public transport drivers who cause the majority of hold ups and pollution on our streets. If/when a properly co-ordinated Jakarta Transport Policy is in place, having been gone through due process of public consultation, eco-driving should be an official section of the driving test here, as it will be in the UK from 2008.

It’s well-known that breathing in lead-laden air reduces brain power and intelligence. Has the slightly cleaner air arrived in time to instill some sense into city planners?

Not many people would want to hug Jakarta. It’s filthy, over-crowded, noisy and an incredibly stressful place to live in. That said, those nice people at the Sacred Bridge Foundation are encouraging the city’s children to do just that.

A city is a wilderness, but not necessarily in a negative way. From the culture point of view, such a wilderness is indeed full of potentials that are ready to be explored. Knowing the wilderness of the city also means knowing and understanding our roots and characteristics. Being unfamiliar with the wilderness of our Surrounding means that we are alienating ourselves from own home. To help children live more positively, transformative relations with elements of their city have to be built. Based on this thought, Sacred Bridge provides a special program for the urban children to learn about their history and identity, as well as the potential that their homes possess.

This coming Sunday, the 10th, children aged 7 to 17 (with their parents) are invited to visit a mighty trashmaster who has travelled around Indonesia and a man who can turn used paper into something useful.

Participants are also encouraged to bring their cameras as an exhibition will be held at Galeri Foto ANTARA the weekend after.

Phone ~ 021.737 1148 or email for details. But hurry, places are limited.

No new news this week, which isn’t good, but loads of links which is. Many of these will be added to the blogrolls of the various categories.

National

Haze thickens over Sumatera and Kalimantan
Latest Haze Map from the National Environment Agency - USA.

Global Forest Watch Interactive Map 
GFW’s data may be a little out of date, but this is a useful way of understanding the damage being done to Indonesia’s forests.

Down To Earth - International Campaign for Ecological Justice in Indonesia
Down to Earth monitors and campaigns on the social and human implications of environmental issues in Indonesia. We aim to support civil society groups and provide an international voice at the levels of national governments, foreign companies, aid agencies and international funding institutions.

International

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) is a nonprofit organization working to use international law and institutions to protect the environment, promote human health, and ensure a just and sustainable society. We provide a wide range of services including legal counsel, policy research, analysis, advocacy, education, training, and capacity building.

EarthFirst links 
Radical environmentalists - wiki article.
 
Deep Ecology is a recent philosophy or ecosophy based on a shift away from the anthropocentric emphasis of established environmental and green movements. The philosophy is marked by a new interpretation of “self” which de-emphasizes the rationalistic duality between the human organism and its environment, thus allowing emphasis to be placed on the intrinsic value of other species, systems and processes in nature. This position leads to an ecocentric system of environmental ethics.

Green Syndicalism has been used as a name for the philosophy of the green guild or sustainable trades movement.

This delightful poster is available from Butterfly Alphabet.
(Thanks to Kevin Kelly.)

Each of the letters is a close-up photograph from the wing of a butterfly. It took Kjell Sandved, Smithsonian naturalist, author and lecturer, 24 years to find and photograph all the letters without harming the butterflies.

I wonder how Kjell got them to stay still.

The following letter was published this week in the Jakarta Post. It is too good to be lost in their archives. The Suharto who wrote this is not to be confused with the doddering old dictator whose acolytes remain to mishandle the Sidoarjo volcanic mudflow disaster, to carve up the power industry among themselves, to set fire to the forests, to allow timber smugglers to go free, to ……. oh, you get the picture. It’s why we’ve set up Green Indonesia.

With Hiroshima and Chernobyl not forgotten, the inability of Indonesia to even install a tsunami warning system, the handling of the Sidoarjo disaster, the government’s indifference and inaptitude to helping the affected population, where ministers do not relay a tsunami warning because there might be no tsunami after all … how do they dare to build a huge reactor of 1,300 megawatt in Kalimantan that will be run by people with such inept mind-sets? If one day there is a malfunction, how terrible will the impact be? And the government will not want to take responsibility.

In Europe they have/had also atom reactors but with capacities under 400 megawatt and they have been shut down because of protests from the population who understand the dangers of these installations. Why is the use of solar power not advanced and promoted? The source is abundant, free of charge from God and there is no dangerous waste to be disposed of.

And above all, the maintenance is less hazard prone than an atomic reactor — keeping especially in mind the mental attitude of the people taking care of such installations. Even clean water, electricity and phone services do not work properly, though we have to pay for it.

There is money for the monorail and busway and the atomic reactor, but not for repairing roads, the irrigation channels and rivers to solve floods or to extinguish forest fires, which are set on purpose to free land for palm oil plantations. It’s plain greed from those in power to get lucrative projects!

Ethics and moral are words in a dictionary and probably cannot even be explained by them. For sure these terms have no place in their daily life, which only revolves around money and power. The old Roman empire had the device: Dividere et impera, which means scatter and rule, which again translates into “swamp the people with issues to confuse them in their daily lives and do your own stuff without serious interference from them”.

So the busway, the monorail and atomic reactor etc. will be imposed on us, the forests will burn on and the wild animals will perish, the people from Sidoarjo will be left to fend for themselves, all other public services will stay rotten because the responsible parties have no sense of shame about their bad performance, because their conscience is solely revolving around their bank accounts!

Who is there to discipline and correct them?

SUHARTO
Tangerang, Banten

We are now used to having our favourite vinyl albums being re-released as CDs and MP3s. I still find it somewhat miraculous that what you’re reading and I’m listening to can all be stored on a microchip smaller than my bitten finger nails.

Of course, much of what you read in blogs and what we listen to here is pirated and a lot of fuss is made about this. But what if there isn’t a choice?

Kevin Kelly is investigating an interesting use of an unexpected material.

During the late 1930s and early 1940s the prevalent sound recording apparatus was the wax disk cutter. As a consequence of the lack of materials in the war-time economy, some inventive sound hunters made their own experiments with new materials within their reach.

Later, in the USSR and Eastern Europe in the 1950s underground night spots would play music pirated from the west. The only media they had were recordings etched into discarded X-ray film.

This material was both plentiful and cheap, and millions of duplications of Western and Soviet groups were made and distributed by an underground roentgenizdat, or x-ray press, which is akin to the samizdat that was the notorious tradition of self-publication among banned writers in the USSR.

The music lived on. Dem bones, dem bones, dem x-rayed bones ……

Green Indonesia would be interested to learn of any inventive uses of otherwise discarded materials seen here. Photographs would be appreciated.

Steven D. Levitt is virtually unique among economists.

He ain’t boring.

Cos rather than dwell on abstract theoretical concepts, he instead focuses on how seemingly disparate phenomena in the real world are often related.

Like how a Supreme Court decision in the US to permit abortions led to vastly lower crime rates. And how swimming pools are actually more dangerous than guns.

The way he makes these connections is fascinating in itself, and offers a really unique way to look at the world – if you can make the connections.

In line with his way of thinking, you could say that the orangutans in Kalimantan are facing extinction because of rising crude oil prices.

Why is that? Well because the high crude oil prices have prompted the Indonesian government to come up with plans to turn huge tracts of Indonesia into palm oil plantations. And how are they gonna find such huge landbank? By destroying the rainforest of course.

And the process is well under way, with companies like Malaysia’s Golden Hope (hope for who? Not the Dayaks or orangutans that’s for sure) lining up to destroy Kalimantan.

But what gets me at the moment is the Indonesian politicians feigning concern at the forest fires that are deliberately being lit to clear land for the plantations.

Nah. They couldn’t care less and are complicit in this environmental destruction. They can’t even stop the national parks from being razed for God’s sake (as in Riau). No doubt they’ll get their nice little backhanders from the plantation companies once the money starts rolling in.

Another sign of this complicity comes with news that Indonesia had identified seven companies responsible for the fires but is refusing to announce their names! Now why would that be I wonder? Come on Kalla. Please tell us. I’m sure you’ve got a very good reason!

Anyway, I’ll leave the last word to Environment Minister Rachmat Witeolar who says:

“We are making very, very serious efforts. We will not be able to eradicate the fires completely this year and next year, but in two years they will be gone”

But what will be gone? The fires or the forests?
…………………………………………………………………………
This post is courtesy of Indcoup who is VERY ANGRY.  And so we should all be. When the neighbouring countries of Singapore and Malaysia offer their annual almost ritualistic complaints about the haze from forest and peat fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan which smothers their citizens, they conveniently overlook the fact that amongst the major pyromaniacs here are some of their own citizens. If Indonesians are involved, they could well be residing in Singapore which has yet to agree an extradition treaty with Indonesia.

Jakartass