Indonesia Taking Care of Mother Earth throughout the Years
Since its independence in 1945, Indonesia has been seeking to protect and preserve the environment. The global awareness of the importance of environmental protection spiked after the 1972 Stockholm Conference. Furthermore, ASEAN also prepared an Action Plan to protect the marine environment and coastal areas in 1976. There were also growing demands from the public to include pro-environment policies in light of the spiking environmental issues across the world. These events have encouraged Indonesia to enact its first legal arrangement to enforce environmental protection, Law No. 4 the Year 1982 on Environmental Management. Since then, numerous legal arrangements have been promulgated, with Law 4/1982 as the basis. Throughout the years, the environmental issues exacerbated, encouraging the government to enact a newer version of Law 4/1982 to Law No. 32 the Year 2009 on the Environmental Protection and Management, with the hope to bring a fresh perspective on ways to preserve the environment. Recently, Indonesia also signed the Paris Agreement, demonstrating the commitment to work hand in hand to tackling climate change.
Aside from that, Indonesia has also adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the national legislation, President Regulation No. 59 the Year 2017 on the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals. The SDGs are also deeply integrated into the Medium Term Development Plan (RPJMN) 2020-2024 through the Green Growth program and Low Carbon Development Indonesia. The Plan is even regarded as the first-ever sustainable development plan in Indonesia. It is also worth mentioning that Indonesia has unlocked another environmental preservation effort by banning single-use plastic and the upcoming carbon taxation.
A person’s hand holding a plant (photo/Alena Koval on Pexels)
Green Growth Program
A joint collaboration between the Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas) and Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), the Green Growth program strives to support Indonesia in realizing sustainable green economic growth. To achieve this, the Green Growth program aspires to provide an enabling environment to promote green investment. There are three key sector priorities of the Green Growth program:
Sustainable energy
Sustainable landscape
Special economic zone
Green Climate Fund (GCF) readiness program
The program is the knowledge bank for green growth - from handbooks to reports, Green Growth is accessible for free to enrich our green knowledge and skills. Their roadmap also includes various capacity-building programs for local and national decision-makers such as sectoral support, green growth curriculum, and tools development.
Low Carbon Development Initiative (LCDI)
The LCDI is a development platform prepared by Bappenas to arrange a low carbon development policy. Guided by system dynamics and spatial dynamics as the scientific approach, LCDI aims to identify changes from a phenomenon’s dynamic behavior and simulate the spatial impact of a particular intervention respectively. LCDI believes that social welfare, economic development, and low greenhouse gas emission are closely interrelated.
Plastic Ban in Various Cities/Regencies in Indonesia
As one of the biggest countries with plastic waste, Indonesia aspires to cater to this by reducing the number of single-use plastics. Since 2016, the government has adopted the policy to pay for plastic bags. Prior to this, supermarkets usually provided their customers with free plastic bags for their shopping. Responding to this regulation, several local governments have also enacted specific legislation that limits or prohibits the use of single-use plastic. Banjarmasin was the first city in Asia Pacific to prohibit plastic bags. Such regulation has been effective for 6 years now. This has generated an incremental decrease in the use of single-use plastic bags and the cost to waste management. Seeing the success of Banjarmasin’s policy, other cities started to follow Banjarmasin’s path. For example, Surabaya city aspires to reduce the number of plastics by obliging business owners to use standardized and environmentally friendly plastic for their business (i.e. ‘plastic’ made out of cassava).
Carbon Taxation
To mitigate climate change, Indonesia will also implement carbon pricing that will be effective from July 1, 2022. This taxation also strives to encourage businesses to transform to fair and sustainable energy. This is a bold government action to hold business owners accountable for their activities. However, the policy will be fractional and limited only to the coal industry for the next two years and will then be reviewed to be implemented in other sectors such as transportation and land-based industry.
Stop pollution in a placard (photo/Thirdman on Pexels)
There are actually more conservation and protection efforts aside from the aforementioned programs and policies. In this blog, we will focus more on the recent events that happened in Indonesia. Seeing the programs and policies, it can be implied that the progress of environmental protection in Indonesia can be considered as ‘progressing’ before the Covid-19 pandemic. There were educated narratives and tangible actions growing from both the government and the civil society. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has inevitably impeded some of the preservation efforts. Yet, the pandemic also has its silver lining to the environmental protection effort.
Favoring business, neglecting the environment and social: omnibus law
This infamous job creation and investment bill had gained controversy and mass protest among Indonesian citizens across the archipelago. The formulation process was limited to public scrutiny. It was also lacking public input, causing numerous conflicting provisions that promote the business sector at the expense of social and environmental interests.
As a part of Covid-19’s quick response, the bill was hastily pushed by the government to be put into effect immediately. It was effective from November 20, 2020. On the one hand, it favors the business process with its loosened restriction on foreign investment and business permits, yet such relaxation is regulated at the expense of workers’ rights and environmental preservation. Here are several changes that can raise the risk of environmental destruction:
Removing legal protections for primary forest cover → increasing the risk of deforestation
Loosening the requirements to conduct an environmental impact assessment as a precondition to obtaining a business license → enable companies that dismiss their environmental impact to operate
Limiting public consultancy in the environmental assessment process to only those directly impacted by the project → diminishing the role of NGOs, community members, and indigenous people
The ‘hiatus’ (or end?) of mass and unsustainable tourism
The mass development of the tourism industry in Bali prior to the pandemic has taken a toll on the environmental condition. Far from sustainable, the tourism industry practices had caused various environmental issues such as plastic waste covering beaches like Kuta. This marine pollution does not only affect the attraction of the island but is also dangerous to the ocean animals like turtles that are often entangled in plastic waste.
With the immediate halt and restriction to travel for around 2 years, beaches in Bali have been reported to be much cleaner. On another positive note, the collapse of the tourism industry during the pandemic has given time for the Balinese to strategize for more sustainable tourism industry. Balinese youth particularly learn to adapt to the situation and be creative to seek more sustainable alternatives aside from relying on Bali’s tourism as a source of income.
Throughout the years, we indeed have progressed to build a greener and better world. But it is an overstatement to be content about the current situation. There is still a lot of homework that needs to be done by each of us—government, NGOs, individuals—before the impact of climate change becomes irreversible. As a watchdog, NGOs are vital to supervising the government’s motion. Through campaigns, petitions, and public consultancies, NGOs realize their role to ensure that we are on the right track of sustainability. Ultimately, such efforts then become of significant importance to raise awareness of the issue and demand legal actions from the government.
In collaboration with dozens of local and national NGOs, Pratisara Bumi Foundation will soon be launching the Ekonomi Membumi campaign to escalate our impact on the people and the planet, pushing toward ESG readiness for Indonesian MSMEs.
Source:
Bell, Lauren. “Indonesia’s five most consequential environmental stories of 2020.” Mongabay. 29 December 2020.
Kine, Phelim. “Indonesia’s New Omnibus Law Trades ‘Green Growth’ for Environmental Ruin.” The Diplomat. 14 October 2020.
Anwar, Muhammad Choirul. “Mengenal Apa Itu Pajak Karbon yang Mulai Berlaku 1 Juli 2022.” Kompas. 2 April 2022.