Indonesia Environmental Concerns
Mount Arjuno, the highest point in Jawa Timur Province
Courtesy Indonesian Department of Information
For centuries, the geographical resources of the
Indonesian
archipelago have been exploited in ways that fall into
consistent
social and historical patterns. One cultural pattern
consists of
the formerly Indianized, rice-growing peasants in the
valleys and
plains of Sumatra, Java, and Bali; another cultural
complex is
composed of the largely Islamic coastal commercial sector;
a third,
more marginal sector consists of the upland forest farming
communities which exist by means of subsistence swidden
agriculture. To some degree, these patterns can be linked
to the
geographical resources themselves, with abundant
shoreline,
generally calm seas, and steady winds favoring the use of
sailing
vessels, and fertile valleys and plains--at least in the
Greater
Sunda Islands--permitting irrigated rice farming. The
heavily
forested, mountainous interior hinders overland
communication by
road or river, but fosters slash-and-burn agriculture.
Each of these patterns of ecological and economic
adaptation
experienced tremendous pressures during the 1970s and
1980s, with
rising population density, soil erosion, river-bed
siltation, and
water pollution from agricultural pesticides and off-shore
oil
drilling. In the coastal commercial sector, for instance,
the
livelihood of fishing people and those engaged in allied
activities--roughly 5.6 million people--began to be
imperiled in
the late 1970s by declining fish stocks brought about by
the
contamination of coastal waters. Fishermen in northern
Java
experienced marked declines in certain kinds of fish
catches and by
the mid-1980s saw the virtual disappearance of the
terburuk
fish in some areas. Effluent from fertilizer plants in
Gresik in
northern Java polluted ponds and killed milkfish fry and
young
shrimp. The pollution of the Strait of Malacca between
Malaysia and
Sumatra from oil leakage from the Japanese supertanker
Showa
Maru in January 1975 was a major environmental
disaster for the
fragile Sumatran coastline. The danger of supertanker
accidents
also increased in the heavily trafficked strait.
The coastal commercial sector suffered from
environmental
pressures on the mainland, as well. Soil erosion from
upland
deforestation exacerbated the problem of siltation
downstream and
into the sea. Silt deposits covered and killed once-lively
coral
reefs, creating mangrove thickets and making harbor access
increasingly difficult, if not impossible, without massive
and
expensive dredging operations.
Although overfishing by Japanese and American "floating
factory" fishing boats was officially restricted in
Indonesia in
1982, the scarcity of fish in many formerly productive
waters
remained a matter of some concern in the early 1990s. As
Indonesian
fishermen improved their technological capacity to catch
fish, they
also threatened the total supply.
A different, but related, set of environmental
pressures arose
in the 1970s and 1980s among the rice-growing peasants
living in
the plains and valleys. Rising population densities and
the
consequent demand for arable land gave rise to serious
soil
erosion, deforestation because of the need for firewood,
and
depletion of soil nutrients. Runoff from pesticides
polluted water
supplies in some areas and poisoned fish ponds. Although
national
and local governments appeared to be aware of the problem,
the need
to balance environmental protection with pressing demands
of a
hungry population and an electorate eager for economic
growth did
not diminish.
Major problems faced the mountainous interior regions
of
Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Sumatra. These problems included
deforestation, soil erosion, massive forest fires, and
even
desertification resulting from intensive commercial
logging--all
these threatened to create environmental disaster. In 1983
some 3
million hectares of prime tropical forest worth at least
US$10
billion were destroyed in a fire in Kalimantan Timur
Province. The
disastrous scale of this fire was made possible by the
piles of
dead wood left behind by the timber industry. Even
discounting the
calamitous effects of the fire, in the mid-1980s
Indonesia's
deforestation rate was the highest in Southeast Asia, at
700,000
hectares per year and possibly as much as 1 million
hectares per
year. Although additional deforestation came about as a
result of
the government-sponsored Transmigration Program
(transmagrasi--see Glossary)
in uninhabited woodlands, in
some cases the effects of this process were mitigated by
replacing the original forest cover with plantation trees, such as
coffee, rubber, or palm
(see Migration
, this ch.). In many areas of
Kalimantan, however, large sections of forest were
cleared, with
little or no systematic effort at reforestation. Although
reforestation laws existed, they were rarely or only
selectively
enforced, leaving the bare land exposed to heavy rainfall,
leaching, and erosion. Because commercial logging permits
were
granted from Jakarta, the local inhabitants of the forests
had
little say about land use, but in the mid-1980s, the
government,
through the Department of Forestry, joined with the
World Bank (see Glossary)
to develop a forestry management plan. The
efforts
resulted in the first forest inventory since colonial
times,
seminal forestry research, conservation and national parks
programs, and development of a master plan by the Food and
Agriculture Organization
(FAO--see Glossary) of the United
Nations (UN).
Data as of November 1992
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