By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, May 26 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on April 7 2021

Ngadirejo residents have been converting their organic waste into compost and are selling this to inorganic waste to private companies. They are also planting vegetables in their backyards and on unused land as part of the community’s urban farming activity and climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.
Courtesy: Serono Arief Wijaya, ProKlim Ngadirejo

JAKARTA, Apr 7 2021 (IPS) – Residents of Ngadirejo village in Sukaharjo regency, Central Java province, had often found themselves helpless when their wells dried up or water flooded through their homes. But thanks to a national campaign called Program Kampung Iklim, known by its acronym ProKlim, they now have solutions to this flooding that generally occurs because of a lack of adequate water catchments.

“We started planting biopore holes and erecting infiltration wells in early 2016 to harvest rainwater and wastewater. The results have been almost instantaneous – our wells have never run out of water and floods never visited us again since 2017,” Serono Arief Wijaya told IPS from Ngadirejo, which lies around one-hour flight east of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.

As climate change hits home, Indonesia has frequently experienced drought and heavy rainfall, with reports of water scarcity, floods, landslides, and crop failures becoming common. In 2012, the government introduced Program Kampung Iklim, which literally means Climate Village Programme, to raise public awareness towards global warming and to assist people at grassroots level to draw up adaptation and mitigation plans.

While attending a seminar organised by the local office of Environment and Forestry Department in December 2015, leaders of Ngadirejo, according to Wijaya, heard the word global warming and ProKlim for the first time. The following year community leaders decided to plant biopore holes along Ngadirejo’s drainage network and build infiltration wells throughout the neighbourhood in adaptation and mitigation efforts.

“We now have around 600 biopore holes, each measuring one meter deep and eight centimetres wide, and 50 infiltration wells measuring one meter deep and three meters wide each,” said Wijaya, who heads Ngadirejo’s ProKlim campaign.

“Many residents who had access to piped water previously now harvest groundwater instead for their daily needs,” he added.

Up until 2016, only between 10 to 15 percent of Ngadirejo residents had access to piped water, with the remainder reliant on artesian wells only. According to 2020 figures, the village has some 3,000 families – slightly over 10,000 people.

Aside from harvesting rainwater, Ngadirejo residents have also been converting their organic waste into compost and are selling this to private companies. They are also planting vegetables in their backyards and on unused land as part of the community’s urban farming activity.

They also use LED light bulbs and automatic sensors to switch lights on or off when needed and have planted trees with the slogan “one-house-one-big-tree”.

“We have also designated a section of our village as a tourist destination and training centre where we explain our ProKlim actions to visitors or conduct training on how to make biopore holes, infiltration wells, fertiliser, or anything related to adaptation and mitigation actions,” Wijaya said.

Residents sell their organic and inorganic waste at a waste bank in Ngadirejo village, Sukoharjo regency, Central Java province. Courtesy Serono Arief Wijaya, ProKlim Ngadirejo

Hardi Buhairat, a 50-year-old resident of Poleonro in Bone regency, South Sulawesi province — a three hour flight east of Jakarta — expressed a similar sentiment when talking about the ProKlim programme being implemented in his village.

“ProKlim has brought the Lita River back to life and we are very happy about that. The river is our only source of water for household consumption and farming but there were times it could no longer irrigate our field. Its water debit has returned and is stable throughout the year,” Buhairat, who is head of Poleonro’s ProKlim programme, told IPS.

The village started implementing ProKlim solutions in 2015, kicking it off with series of meetings with residents where they discussed climate change and the actions community members could take to avert its adverse impacts.

“The first things we did was issuing a village ordinance banning the residents from cutting trees and harvesting woods in and around Lita River’s spring. Soon after that, we planted thousands of trees in deforested areas around the spring,” said Buhairat, who is also Poleonro’s chief.

Poleonro’s village leaders also issued two other ordinances; one banning residents from burning rice straw and farms after harvest.

The 2019 Pollution and Health Metrics: Global, Regional and Country Analysis report from the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) ranks Indonesia as 4th in the world in terms of annual premature pollution-related deaths, after the populous nations of India, China and Nigeria.

The second ordinance requires residents to replace any tree they cut down in customary forests.

“The latter ordinance allows them to harvest trees in their customary forests but also orders them to plant new trees to replace the ones they cut. To ensure that they comply the rule, we inspect their forests regularly,” Buhairat said.

The residents also planted biopore holes to store rainwater underground, built wells to filter household wastewater before it goes into the river, and treated waste, converting organic waste into compost.

“Since 2015, we encouraged the residents to have indoor toilets. We are glad all households now have their own toilets indoors,” Buhairat said.

Buhairat said Poleonro villagers have also begun to diversify their food crops as part of their food security action.

“Our farmers planted organic red rice for the first time in 2018. We are now looking for buyers before going on a large-scale production. We want organic red rice to be our specialty commodity,” he said.

Since ProKlim’s launch in 2012, over 2,700 villages in 33 provinces have been registered as climate villages, according to Sri Tantri Arundhati, Director of Climate Change Adaptation of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. In 2020, six of those villages, including Ngadirejo and Poleonro, received the ProKlim Lestari Trophy, the highest accolade for a climate village programme, from the ministry.

Arundhati said the government now aims to establish 20,000 climate villages, which constitute roughly 25 percent of the country’s 83,000 villages, by 2024.

“We will cooperate with other stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and the private sector, and improve coordination with local governments and related departments. We will also work to improve the capacity of local governments and people at the grassroots level,” she told IPS.

Arundhati said her ministry has also asked registered climate villages to promote ProKlim and help other communities design their adaptation and mitigation actions.

Wijaya confirmed Ngadirejo village has been encouraged to help other communities implement ProKlim.

“We are now helping 44 villages in Central Java where we explain about global warming and help residents there identify adaptation and mitigation actions they could take to deal with climate change-related problems in their community,” Wijaya said.

Buhairat said Poleonro is now guiding 15 villages in South Sulawesi to become climate villages.

Rizaldi Boer of the state-owned Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) said ProKlim could help the government achieve the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDCs) agreed according to the Paris Agreement.

“The programme can help a lot in dealing with climate change as it encourages active participation of people at grassroots level,” said Boer, who is also director of the Centre for Climate Risk and Opportunity Management in Southeast Asia and Pacific.

“However, the government should establish a standardised report mechanism on ProKlim actions, particularly how to calculate its contribution to greenhouse gas emission reduction,” Boer told IPS.

Under the country’s NDCs, Indonesia has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent with its own initiatives and 41 percent with external financial and technical assistance by 2030.

Boer also praised the government’s ambitious target of establishing 20,000 climate villages by 2024.

“It’s a tall order but it is not impossible. However, it requires participation of governments at all levels and all stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and the private sector,” he said.

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Ngadirejo residents have been converting their organic waste into compost and are selling this to inorganic waste to private companies. They are also planting vegetables in their backyards and on unused land as part of the community’s urban farming activity and climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. Courtesy: Serono Arief Wijaya, ProKlim Ngadirejo

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Apr 7 2021 (IPS)

Residents of Ngadirejo village in Sukaharjo regency, Central Java province, had often found themselves helpless when their wells dried up or water flooded through their homes. But thanks to a national campaign called Program Kampung Iklim, known by its acronym ProKlim, they now have solutions to this flooding that generally occurs because of a lack of adequate water catchments.

“We started planting biopore holes and erecting infiltration wells in early 2016 to harvest rainwater and wastewater. The results have been almost instantaneous – our wells have never run out of water and floods never visited us again since 2017,” Serono Arief Wijaya told IPS from Ngadirejo, which lies around one-hour flight east of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.

As climate change hits home, Indonesia has frequently experienced drought and heavy rainfall, with reports of water scarcity, floods, landslides, and crop failures becoming common. In 2012, the government introduced Program Kampung Iklim, which literally means Climate Village Programme, to raise public awareness towards global warming and to assist people at grassroots level to draw up adaptation and mitigation plans.

While attending a seminar organised by the local office of Environment and Forestry Department in December 2015, leaders of Ngadirejo, according to Wijaya, heard the word global warming and ProKlim for the first time. The following year community leaders decided to plant biopore holes along Ngadirejo’s drainage network and build infiltration wells throughout the neighbourhood in adaptation and mitigation efforts.

“We now have around 600 biopore holes, each measuring one meter deep and eight centimetres wide, and 50 infiltration wells measuring one meter deep and three meters wide each,” said Wijaya, who heads Ngadirejo’s ProKlim campaign.

“Many residents who had access to piped water previously now harvest groundwater instead for their daily needs,” he added.

Up until 2016, only between 10 to 15 percent of Ngadirejo residents had access to piped water, with the remainder reliant on artesian wells only. According to 2020 figures, the village has some 3,000 families – slightly over 10,000 people.

Aside from harvesting rainwater, Ngadirejo residents have also been converting their organic waste into compost and are selling this to private companies. They are also planting vegetables in their backyards and on unused land as part of the community’s urban farming activity.

They also use LED light bulbs and automatic sensors to switch lights on or off when needed and have planted trees with the slogan “one-house-one-big-tree”.

“We have also designated a section of our village as a tourist destination and training centre where we explain our ProKlim actions to visitors or conduct training on how to make biopore holes, infiltration wells, fertiliser, or anything related to adaptation and mitigation actions,” Wijaya said.

Residents sell their organic and inorganic waste at a waste bank in Ngadirejo village, Sukoharjo regency, Central Java province. Courtesy Serono Arief Wijaya, ProKlim Ngadirejo

Hardi Buhairat, a 50-year-old resident of Poleonro in Bone regency, South Sulawesi province — a three hour flight east of Jakarta — expressed a similar sentiment when talking about the ProKlim programme being implemented in his village.

“ProKlim has brought the Lita River back to life and we are very happy about that. The river is our only source of water for household consumption and farming but there were times it could no longer irrigate our field. Its water debit has returned and is stable throughout the year,” Buhairat, who is head of Poleonro’s ProKlim programme, told IPS.

The village started implementing ProKlim solutions in 2015, kicking it off with series of meetings with residents where they discussed climate change and the actions community members could take to avert its adverse impacts.

“The first things we did was issuing a village ordinance banning the residents from cutting trees and harvesting woods in and around Lita River’s spring. Soon after that, we planted thousands of trees in deforested areas around the spring,” said Buhairat, who is also Poleonro’s chief.

Poleonro’s village leaders also issued two other ordinances; one banning residents from burning rice straw and farms after harvest.

The 2019 Pollution and Health Metrics: Global, Regional and Country Analysis report from the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) ranks Indonesia as 4th in the world in terms of annual premature pollution-related deaths, after the populous nations of India, China and Nigeria.

The second ordinance requires residents to replace any tree they cut down in customary forests.

“The latter ordinance allows them to harvest trees in their customary forests but also orders them to plant new trees to replace the ones they cut. To ensure that they comply the rule, we inspect their forests regularly,” Buhairat said.

The residents also planted biopore holes to store rainwater underground, built wells to filter household wastewater before it goes into the river, and treated waste, converting organic waste into compost.

“Since 2015, we encouraged the residents to have indoor toilets. We are glad all households now have their own toilets indoors,” Buhairat said.

Buhairat said Poleonro villagers have also begun to diversify their food crops as part of their food security action.

“Our farmers planted organic red rice for the first time in 2018. We are now looking for buyers before going on a large-scale production. We want organic red rice to be our specialty commodity,” he said.

Since ProKlim’s launch in 2012, over 2,700 villages in 33 provinces have been registered as climate villages, according to Sri Tantri Arundhati, Director of Climate Change Adaptation of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. In 2020, six of those villages, including Ngadirejo and Poleonro, received the ProKlim Lestari Trophy, the highest accolade for a climate village programme, from the ministry.

Arundhati said the government now aims to establish 20,000 climate villages, which constitute roughly 25 percent of the country’s 83,000 villages, by 2024.

“We will cooperate with other stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and the private sector, and improve coordination with local governments and related departments. We will also work to improve the capacity of local governments and people at the grassroots level,” she told IPS.

Arundhati said her ministry has also asked registered climate villages to promote ProKlim and help other communities design their adaptation and mitigation actions.

Wijaya confirmed Ngadirejo village has been encouraged to help other communities implement ProKlim.

“We are now helping 44 villages in Central Java where we explain about global warming and help residents there identify adaptation and mitigation actions they could take to deal with  climate change-related problems in their community,” Wijaya said.

Buhairat said Poleonro is now guiding 15 villages in South Sulawesi to become climate villages.

Rizaldi Boer of the state-owned Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) said ProKlim could help the government achieve the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDCs) agreed according to the Paris Agreement.

“The programme can help a lot in dealing with climate change as it encourages active participation of people at grassroots level,” said Boer, who is also director of the Centre for Climate Risk and Opportunity Management in Southeast Asia and Pacific.

“However, the government should establish a standardised report mechanism on ProKlim actions, particularly how to calculate its contribution to greenhouse gas emission reduction,” Boer told IPS.

Under the country’s NDCs, Indonesia has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent with its own initiatives and 41 percent with external financial and technical assistance by 2030.

Boer also praised the government’s ambitious target of establishing 20,000 climate villages by 2024.

“It’s a tall order but it is not impossible. However, it requires participation of governments at all levels and all stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and the private sector,” he said.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Farmers in Indonesia’s West Java province. Indonesia’s agriculture sector is facing two major issues – decreases in both the number of farmers and irrigated rice fields. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Dec 10 2020 (IPS)

When his friends prodded him to use an agricultural app in July, rice farmer Mustafa reluctantly downloaded RiTx Bertani into his smart phone. Four months later, he feels happy to have given the technology a try.

“I started using the application in early September when I planted rice on 0.7 hectare of irrigated land,” the 41-year-old told IPS last month in a phone interview from Bondowoso regency in East Java, a one-hour flight east of the capital Jakarta.

“I cannot tell yet if it helps boost production or not, but I am very happy with the technology. It helped me detect and identify a rice disease in late September. We had always called rice diseases brown planthopper before and used the same medicines to control the disease. Thanks to the technology, we now know different rice diseases and can use appropriate insecticides to deal with them,” said the father of two.

Developed by start-up tech company PT Mitra Sejahtera Membangun Bangsa (MSMB), RiTx Bertani is designed to help farmers deal with climate change and other problems they may have through digital technology. RiTx comes from the words agriculture technology, while Bertani literally means farming.

Another farmer, Kurlufi, meanwhile, said he downloaded the application in 2018 but uninstalled it shortly after as he found it less helpful for his chilli crop. Earlier this year, he decided to reinstall it as the price of chilli suddenly dropped.

“The price of chilli has dropped sharply since the coronavirus hit the country in March. I looked for alternative crops when the application suggested that my field was suitable for cucumber,” the 42-year-old father of two told IPS from Banyuwangi regency, also in East Java.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 18,366 people as of today (Dec.10) has forced people to work from home and plant vegetables at their backyards, driving down the price of food crops due to low demand.

Kurlufi owns 0.95 hectares of farm land. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, he has planted cucumber on 0.6 hectares of his field for two successive seasons, harvesting eight kilograms of cucumber seeds in the first season and 18 kilograms in the second. Each season last for almost three months.

“I sold the seeds for Rp450,000 (US$32) per kilogram to a local company,” he said.

“I find the technology very useful for people who have no prior or little experience in farming. In my case, it helps me decide what crops to plant and when to hire workers to do the pollination as it provides weather forecasts for the next six to seven days,” Kurlufi added.

Mustafa and Kurlufi are two of 11,000 farmers in eight provinces in Indonesia using RiTx Bertani, one of dozens of agricultural apps currently available as the government promotes Smart Farming 4.0 or digitised agriculture.

MSMB project manager Rizal Dwi Prastyo said they have both hardware — in the form of on-field sensors, which are connected to the internet — and software — in the form of the RiTx Bertani app.

“Users have to submit detailed information about their fields, including the size, borders, latitude, and longitude for the sensors to locate. Once the sensors detect the fields, they immediately measure the soil’s moisture and air temperature and feeds those information to the internet,” Prastyo told IPS from Yogyakarta, a 50-minute flight east of Jakarta.

One sensor, which costs approximately $2,700, covers an area of 10 hectares of land.

Based on the soil’s current moisture, Prastyo said, agriculture experts at the company provide suggestions to farmers through the app on what crops suit their land best for the next planting season.

“Throughout the season, the sensors measure soil moisture and air humidity every 10 minutes and upload them into the internet. Users can read the feeds through the app under the sensor menu. Farmers need this kind of information to apply fertiliser or spray pesticides, if needed,” he continued.

The application, Prastyo said, also allows farmers to record all farming activity and save them under a record menu so they know exactly when next to apply fertiliser or spray pesticides or insecticides. Farmers can also ask for additional assistance through the online forum.

Activist Said Iqbal of non-governmental organisation People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty welcomed the use of apps in farming but said he doubted that digitised agriculture would improve the welfare of farmers and help the country achieve food sovereignty in the immediate future.

“Digitising the agriculture sector is unavoidable now but the root of the matter is farmers find no incentive to boost production. Why? Because they control on-farm activities only, while upstream and downstream activities are controlled by big businesses. It has become a public knowledge that intermediaries or traders earn more than twice of farmers’ earnings,” he said.

He also said most farmers in Indonesia were small holders, with each owning an average of 0.2 hectares of irrigated land. “Because of that condition, many farmers choose to sell their productive land and work as cheap labour, further reducing irrigated fields, especially on Java Island,” Iqbal said.

Another activist, Tejo Wahyu Jatmiko of the Alliance for Prosperous Village, agreed with Iqbal, saying that Indonesia’s agriculture sector was facing two major issues – decreases in both the number of farmers and irrigated rice fields.

Quoting a report by the Central Statistics Agency or BPS, Jatmiko told a webinar in Jakarta that the country had only 33.4 million farmers in 2019, down from 35.6 million in 2015, while irrigated fields stood at 10.68 million hectares in 2019, down by 700 hectares from 2018.

These conditions have resulted in fluctuations in rice production, forcing the government to import rice to meet the needs of over 270 million people. BPS reports show that the country imported 444,508 tons of rice in 2019, down from 2.25 million tons in 2018, 305,270 tons in 2017, and 1.28 million tons in 2016.

However, in terms of sustainable agriculture, Indonesia has a score of 61.1 out of 100,where 100 is the highest sustainability and greatest progress towards meeting environmental, societal and economic Key Performance Indicators. This is according to the Food Sustainability Index, developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition. 

In a bid to increase farmers’ welfare, since 2017 President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has promoted farmer corporation, where farmers are organised into business ventures, founded and financed by farmers themselves, with the aim of controlling both on-farm and off-farm activities in the agricultural sector.

Dr. Syahyuti, a researcher with the Indonesian Center of Socio-Economic and Agricultural Policy of the Ministry of Agriculture, said under the corporation concept, farmers are also involved in the provision of seeds, fertiliser, agricultural machines, and capital with on-farm activities, and buying, milling, and selling rice in off-farm activities.

Based on experiences in some sub-districts, Syahyuti said farmers corporations increased farmers’ income by 72 percent.

While the government is working to organise farmers into business groups, Mustafa is upbeat that digitised agriculture will help increase the number of farmers in Indonesia.

“I notice the number of people tilling land in the district has increased since [using] the RiTx Bertani [app]. Many of them are young and unexperienced. I get the impression that with the technology arming is no longer a dirty job, but a lifestyle that more and more people embrace,” Mustafa said.

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Students at the Santo Markus I Elementary School in East Jakarta, Indonesia, learn how to plant medicinal herbs as part of their green programme. Courtesy Ruben Kharisma

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Oct 28 2020 (IPS)

In West Jakarta, Indonesia, teachers at the private Santo Kristoforus High School are so environmentally conscious they make other schools seem a little bit green when it comes to environmental education.

“We integrate environmental issues into science, especially natural science subjects. At school we teach them to conserve water and electricity. And since we don’t have a designated area for students to grow and learn about plants, we organise field trips to botanical gardens in the capital Jakarta and surrounding towns,” teacher Senobius Santi told IPS.

Santo Markus I, a private elementary school in East Jakarta, Indonesia, also has  a green vision. Since it opened in 2006, the science and homeroom teachers have been integrating environmental issues into their classes and designing extracurricular activities aimed at teaching students to care for the environment.

“We usually ask our students to bring medicinal herbs to be planted in what we call family garden under the guidance of their teachers. We homeroom teachers meet every two months to evaluate the programme,” teacher Ruben Kharisma told IPS.

He explained that the school’s green programme is not limited to planting medicinal herbs.

“We also teach our students environmental cleanliness, including disposing of trash at designated bins and keeping a roaster of students cleaning classrooms after school hours.”

Both schools could be candidates for the country’s Adiwiyata award, which is given to elementary, junior high, and senior high schools that have integrated environmental issues into their education system, including extracurricular activities.

The Ministry of Environment and Forestry introduced the award in 2006, with the aim to develop environmentally-conscious school that are able to participate and contribute to efforts for conservation and sustainable development. The award has four indicators that include; an environment-based school policy, an environment-based curriculum, participatory environmental activities, and environmentally-friendly supporting facilities.

Indonesia has been listed among the world’s biggest polluters, producing a total of 2.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2015. In 2016, the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions went down to 1.46 million metric tons and fell down further to 1.15 million metric tons in 2017, according to Indonesia’s Statistics Agency. 

Land-use change and forestry contributed at least 65.5 percent of GHG emissions, followed by the energy sector at 22.6 percent, and agriculture at 7.4 percent. 

A 2018 study by Greenpeace and AirVisual IQ showed that Jakarta ranked first in Southeast Asia for the worst air quality and that Jakarta, along with Hanoi, was one of Southeast Asia’s two-most polluted cities.

In 2009, the country pledged in its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce GHG emissions by 29 percent below the business as usual level by 2030, and by 41 percent with international support.

But Prof. Arief Rachman, Executive Chairman of the Indonesian National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and Ministry of Education and Culture official, said the Adiwiyata campaign would help government efforts to reduce the country’s GHG emissions.

“Indeed, the green campaign would not bring immediate results, but we are on the right track. We have to cultivate environmental awareness among the country’s young generations if we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” Rahman told IPS.

“We have around 51 million students from the elementary to senior high school level and 2.7 million teachers, it takes time to mobilise all of them. But I believe we are on the right track. We have to educate our young students to care for the environment and cultivate a nature-loving culture and environment in the school compound,” Rachman said.

According to Rachman, the Adiwiyata programme focuses on climate change education and accommodates UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development criteria of “student participation, community involvement, varied learning methods, local excellence-based learning, and proactive actions”.

“The Adiwiyata programme is built on two basic principles of participation and sustainability. Participation means school communities are actively involved in school management from planning, implementation, and evaluation based on their role and responsibility, while sustainability means all school activities should be well planned continuously and comprehensively,” he said in a recent regional webinar hosted by UNESCO Jakarta Office.

Asri Tresnawati, an official from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, told IPS that between 2006 until 2019, the ministry has given national green awards to 3,477 schools.

However, this year the green award was scrapped due to the on-going coronavirus pandemic that has killed 13,612 people out of 400,483 confirmed cases in the country, according to Johns Hopkins. 

Experts expect the coronavirus pandemic will reduce Indonesia’s 2020 emissions by between two to six percent compared to 2019, mainly due to a decrease in household consumption, a slowdown in investments, and a fall in coal and palm oil exports. 

Ananto K. Seta, Education for Sustainable Development Coordinator at the Indonesian National Commission for UNESCO, said the current COVID-19 pandemic presented a challenge for education. According to Seta, over 50 million students in Indonesia are temporarily out of school due to COVID-19. 

“The biggest challenges that students face while learning at home is the lack of internet access and electronic devices, lack of teachers’ ability to deliver (online) the education curriculum, and lack of parents’ ability to accompany their children for learning at home,” he told a recent webinar.

The green programmes run by Santo Markus I and Santo Kristoforus High School are obviously hard to continue in their entirety with pupils learning from home.

But Tresnawati, from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, told IPS the COVID-19 pandemic was a learning opportunity about the strong relation between human health and environmental sustainability.

“When the environment is destroyed or contaminated, new diseases will appear. The COVID-19 pandemic also wakes us up to the reality that we have to take care of the environment just as we take care of ourselves,” Tresnawati said.

But until schools reopen, students will have to learn this lesson from home.

Sungai Nibung village chief Syarif Ibrahim (second from left) leads by example in planting mangrove trees in Kubu Raya regency, West Kalimantan province.

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 23 2020 (IPS)

Samsul sounded very happy last Monday (Mar. 16) when recounting his experience of catching crabs worth more than $60 in a single day. 

“I hauled over 12 kilograms of crabs on that day, which I sold to local traders,” Samsul told IPS during a phone interview from Sungai Nibung, a fishing village inside a protected mangrove forest in Kubu Raya regency, in the West Kalimantan province on Borneo Island. The island is a 90-minute flight north of the country’s capital Jakarta.

But that was some time ago.

Decades of overfishing and rampant use of fish bombs, poison, and trawls, combined with the rapid conversion of land into oil palm plantations in neighbouring villages, had severely depleted crab, shrimp and fish stocks in the area, resulting in dwindling catch and declining incomes for local residents.

To help make ends meet, Sungai Nibung residents would cut down mangrove trees to sell as firewood, often playing cat and mouse with law enforcers as the mangrove forests were protected areas.

But in 2017, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Jakarta set aside 3,058 hectares of mangrove forest for the community to manage under a village forest scheme. Village residents were allowed to cultivate the mangrove forest to improve their economic circumstances but were not allowed to cut down mangrove trees.

Since then many fisherfolk like Samsul not only continue to have an income, but some have even doubled theirs.

“I have been a fisherman since childhood. Prior to 2017, my income was around $6 gross per day. Now, I take home an average of $18 daily,” Samsul, a father of two, said.

Muhammad Tahir, 47, another Sungai Nibung resident and a colleague of Samsul, also had a similar story.

“My income was uncertain before but now I get an average of $242 gross per month. With that income, I was able to send my second child to study at a university in [the provincial capital] Pontianak and my youngest to a junior high school. On top of that, we can also now save around $6 monthly,” the father of four told IPS.

• West Kalimantan’s minimum wage is currently around $140 per month. It was approximately $133 a month in 2019.  

Sungai Nibung, a fishing village located inside a protected mangrove forest in Kubu Raya regency, West Kalimantan province.

Dividing the mangroves for profit

Syarif Ibrahim has been the head of Sungai Nibung village since 2005. He told IPS that the village residents decided to divide the community forest, locally known as hutan desa, into zones for development, conservation, and sustainable agriculture.

“The development zone covers an area of some 1,800 hectares and is designated as fishing grounds, with 400 to 600 hectares of conservation area dedicated to mangrove research and education activities. The sustainable agriculture zone has some 600 hectares for dry-land paddy field and horticulture plants,” Ibrahim said.

“We also agreed that rivers and tributaries in the development zone are closed for fishing for three consecutive months at different times of the year to allow crabs, fish and shrimps to breed and replenish the stock,” Ibrahim said.

Riansyah, a Planet Indonesia Foundation activist who assisted villagers in the area with understanding sustainable fishery, said the first closures ran from August to October 2017, involving five rivers and tributaries.

“Since then, 11 of the village’s 21 rivers and tributaries have been closed and opened alternately for fishing at different times of the year. Each closure lasts for three months,” said Riansyah, adding that five rivers and tributaries were scheduled to be closed in the next round of closures from March 22 to June 22 this year.

During the closures, two fisherfolk are assigned daily to patrol the rivers and tributaries to ensure no one violates the agreement, Riansyah told IPS.

Entering its third year, the open-closed fishing system has proven to improve local people’s economic condition as reflected in both Samsul’s and Tahir’s experiences.

But more importantly, Sungai Nibung residents have learned to save the mangrove forests from destruction. In the conservation zone, for example, fishing is strictly prohibited except in designated areas. Local residents, including fishers, have also learned about the important role mangroves play for coastal ecosystems.

“Now fishers here know mangroves are very important for the sustainability of crab, shrimp and fish in the village and have agreed to stop using fish bombs, poison, and trawls,” Ibrahim told IPS.

According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Indonesia has a score of 61.1 out of 100 when it comes to sustainable agriculture, where 100 is “the highest sustainability and greatest progress towards meeting environmental, societal and economic Key Performance Indicators”. This is just below the average of 65 of other middle income countries.

Saving the mangroves for climate mitigation and sustainable food supply

But aside from the conservation and ensuring that fish stocks are allowed to replenish before fishing, residents have also participated in various mangrove campaigns, planting over 32 hectares of the village forest with mangrove trees since 2017, according to Riansyah.

West Kalimantan, with around 100,000 hectares of mangroves, is home to 75 percent of Indonesia’s mangrove species. Aside from Kubu Raya, mangrove forests are also found in other areas such as Ketapang, Kayong Utara, Mempawah, Sambas and in Singkawang municipality.

According to an international paper, mangroves capture four times more carbon than rainforests and store captured carbon in the soil beneath its trees. This ability to mitigate climate change is a key to a sustainable food system.

The FSI also notes that addressing deforestation is important for countries across the globe adding that, “climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies will be essential in creating a more sustainable food system since agricultural activities make a significant contribution to climate change, accounting for up to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to some estimates.”

Asep Sugiharta, director of Essential Ecosystem Management at the ministry of environment and forestry, told IPS that Indonesia recorded 3.3 million hectares of mangrove forests in 2019, almost 23 percent of the world’s total mangrove forests. At least 252,071 hectares are found in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo Island.

“At least 2.6 million hectares of the country’s total mangrove forests are located outside conservation forests and only 0.7 million hectares are in conservation forests,” Sugiharta told IPS during an interview in Jakarta.

• Indonesia recorded annual greenhouse gas emissions of 2.4 billion tons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) in 2015, around 4.8 percent of the world’s total global emission for that year, according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).  
• Indonesian President Joko Widodo has pledged to cut emissions by 29 percent without international support and 41 percent with international cooperation by 2030, compared to a “business as usual” scenario.

Environmental benefits aside, the open-closed fishing system has given new optimism to Samsul, particularly when it comes to the future of his two children.

“I was not able to finish my elementary education due to dire poverty. With the success of the open-closed system, I am optimistic my income will continue to grow and thus I can send my two children to higher education,” Samsul said. “More than that, I was told the system would ensure the sustainability of the coastal ecosystem for our great grandchildren.”

Meanwhile, village head Ibrahim breathed a sigh of relief that Sungai Nibung residents have bought into the idea of sustainable food production.

“The challenging part was changing people’s paradigms. The villagers were so used to fishing anywhere throughout the year in the mangrove forest, taking big and small crabs, shrimps, or fish. Now, they have started thinking about their sustainability.”

Afra Burga Ambui spent 9 years in forced servitude. Now her former employer is in court in Jakarta, Indonesia, facing charges of assault. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 4 2020 (IPS)

When her uncle offered her an opportunity to work in Jakarta almost a decade ago, the then 15-year-old Afra Burga Ambui immediately agreed and soon she was boarding a two-hour flight to the country’s capital and away from her village on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara, southern Indonesia.

Soon she will likely testify in a case of assault against the man who kept her as virtual prisoner for almost eight years. It was only last October, after he had beat her so severely that it resulted a head injury, that she was finally able to speak out and seek help.

“I want him to be given a very long jail sentence. He locked me up like a prisoner for over eight years, he has to experience what I have gone through,” Ambui told IPS.

Held captive and abused

Shortly after arriving in Jakarta in November 2010, Ambui was hired as a live-in maid by the businessman. He had agreed to pay her a monthly salary of $44, which was roughly half the city’s minimum wage at the time.

“My employer promised to increase my salary by $3.8 every six months but he never paid my salary. As a live-in maid, I also worked long hours without a day off,” Ambui told IPS before a court hearing in western Jakarta.

Seven months into her job, her employer began beating her with sharp objects, plastic pipes, and sometimes even broom handles.

A family in mourning

“I could not tell my condition to family members or friends because I was not allowed to have a cellular phone. Also I could not run away as the doors were always locked. Even when he asked me to buy something from the nearby grocery stores, he would watch me from the gate,” she said.

Meanwhile, at home on Flores Island, her family had already performed her funeral rites and were mourning her death. Her uncle, who had recruited her, had told them that he and the labour agency had lost touch with Ambui.

And her family had decided not to report her missing to the police because they “didn’t want to destroy family relations,” with the uncle who had recruited her, Ambui explained.

But even though Indonesia has the 2007 Eradication of the Criminal Act of Trafficking in Persons law, which imposes imprisonment of between three to 15 years and a fine between $8,440 and $42,216, Ambui’s former employer is only standing trail for assault under a domestic violence act that carries a sentence of up to 10 years. 

When asked why he had not been charged under the anti-trafficking law, lawyers prosecuting the case told IPS it was the best they could do.

A work contract doesn’t guarantee safety against human trafficking

Santi Arief, a 27-year-old migrant domestic worker from West Sumatra, Indonesia, left for Malaysia in January 2019 with a contract, which, among other things, stated that she would receive a salary of $288 per month. She was also to receive overtime pay for work done outside of work hours and one day a week off. However, her employer wanted to pay her only $234, with no overtime or days off.

Upon her arrival in Malaysia, Arief said she was “locked up in a room, while my boss searched my belongings and confiscated all related documents [her work contract, work permit, visa and passport] and my cellular phone”.  

“I insisted that he honour the signed contract but because of that he decided not to pay my salary altogether. I was also made to work long hours and without a day off,” she told IPS.

Towards the end of last year she escaped and sought protection at the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, but her employer had falsely reported her as an irregular migrant to immigration authorities and she was later arrested.

She was detained in prison for several months, living in “unbearable” conditions and also being verbally assaulted by the guards. Eventually someone forced her to sign some documents, which Arief now believes were papers to withdraw the complaint against her employer.

She was sent back to Indonesia soon after.   

Indonesia lacks official records of human trafficking 

Arief and Ambui are just two of thousands, or even tens of thousands, of victims of human trafficking. According to Fitri Lestari, head of Migrant CARE’s Legal Division, a non-governmental organisation working with migrant workers, “human trafficking is becoming rampant with the number of victims increasing every month, in fact every day”. 

The government has no official record of human trafficking cases here. According to the national police, a total of 2,400 cases were investigated and brought to court over from 2013 to 2018.

“We believe those 2,400 cases are just the tip of the iceberg of trafficking in Indonesia,” Destri Handayani, Deputy Assistant for Women Right’s at the  Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, told IPS.

“Many victims don’t want to report to the police because it involves their own family members, close relatives, or in some cases well-connected public figures,” Handayani said.

In some cases, active or retired military/police officers are taught to own or have a connection with many of the so-called labour agencies here.   

Endemic corruption and a human trafficking law that is not implemented  

The 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report, by the United States Embassy in Jakarta praised efforts taken by Indonesia to stem human exploitation but noted the country “does not fully meet the minimum standard for the elimination of trafficking”. It paid attention to the fact that “endemic corruption among officials remained, which impeded anti-trafficking efforts and enabled many traffickers to operate with impunity”.

But not all law enforcement agencies are charging accused criminals with the human trafficking law. In late January, Jakarta police arrested six people for luring 10 teenage girls into prostitution. The girls were reportedly forced to serve at least 10 customers per night or face a fine if they refused, prompting the National Commission on Child Protection (KPAI) to call for harsher punishment for traffickers.

“Those children were recruited and sold both off and online by recruiters,” KPAI commissioner Ai Maryati Shalihah told IPS. “The perpetrators should be punished severely under the anti-trafficking law, not the child protection law, to deter anyone considering exploiting children.”

But Indonesia still remains a transit country, particularly for refugees and asylum seekers from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and East Africa, who are looking to for a better life in Australia or other countries.

• Since 2008, the government has established task forces to combat human trafficking in almost half of its 514 municipalities and regencies across 32 provinces.
• Task force members come from various government agencies, including the national police, the state intelligence agency and the ministries of foreign affairs, health, labour, and social affairs.
• These task forces coordinate prevention efforts and handling of victims of human trafficking, conduct advocacy campaigns and trainings on the dangers of trafficking, and monitor victim protection programmes such as rehabilitation and social reintegration.

In 2017, Indonesia ratified the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Person Especially Women and Children and enacted a national law designed to protect its workers overseas.

Demand for Indonesian workers abroad

But, according to Handayani, high demand for Indonesian workers and the involvement of human trafficking syndicates have undermined the country’s efforts to combat the crime.

“Overseas demand for Indonesian workers remains high, while law enforcement has managed to prosecute small-time field recruiters only, while the funders and end-users remain free to operate,” Handayani said.

At least 4.5 million Indonesians are working in Asia and the Middle East and around 1.9 million of them are undocumented, making them vulnerable to trafficking. A majority of these workers are in domestic service, or work in factories, in the construction industry, on palm oil plantations in Malaysia, and aboard fishing vessels in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ), which actively supports the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 8 of decent work and economic growth, has focused much of its work on eliminating modern slavery.  It has been focusing efforts on creating a global movement of change and a list of recommendations aimed at employers, it states, among other things, that there should be; no withholding of passports and IDs, wages should be directly paid into employees’ bank accounts, their living conditions must be safe and they must be guaranteed freedom of movement.

Emi Sahertian, a church leader and activist in Kupang, the capital of East Nusa Tenggara province, said that while Jakarta’s anti-trafficking programmes were good, they did not address economic poverty as a root cause.

According to a World Bank report, around 9.4 percent of the country’s 264 million people still live below the poverty line in 2019.

“People risk their lives by entering a country illegally because they have no stable income at home. The government should direct its efforts towards creating new jobs,” Sahertian told IPS from Kupang.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

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Stingrays, which can be found in the Indian Ocean which surrounds the Seychelles. This flattened fish is closely related to sharks. The Seychelles has become the first country in the world to issue a blue bond, focused on funding sustainable use of marine resources. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Oct 31 2018 (IPS)

The Republic of Seychelles announced on Monday that it has issued a 10-year blue bond to finance fisheries projects, making it the world’s first country to utilise capital markets for funding the sustainable use of marine resources.

Seychelles Vice President Vincent Meriton told IPS that the bond was officially issued Oct. 9 and that its sales have so far raised 15 million dollars from three institutional investors: Calvert Impact Capital, Nuveen, and Prudential.

“At least 12 million dollars of the proceeds will be allocated for low-interest loans and grants to local fishermen communities, while the remainder will finance research on sustainable fisheries projects,” Meriton told IPS in a telephone interview on Sunday.

The news comes ahead of the first-ever global conference on the blue economy, which will be held at the end of November in Kenya.

Participants from around the globe will gather in the country’s capital, Nairobi, and attend the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference to discuss ways of building a blue economy that harnesses the potential of oceans, lakes and rivers and improves the lives of all.

At the conference participants will also showcase latest innovations, scientific advances and best practices to develop economies while conserving the world’s waters.

The Seychelles’ blue bond will likely be a mechanism of great interest to participants.

“We are honoured to be the first nation to pioneer such a novel financing instrument,” Meriton said when announcing the bond on the first day of the Our Ocean Conference in Nusa Dua, Bali, a one-hour flight east of the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

“The blue bond, which is part of an initiative that combines public and private investment to mobilise resources for empowering local communities and businesses, will greatly assist Seychelles in achieving a transition to sustainable fisheries and safeguarding our oceans while we sustainably develop our blue economy,” Meriton continued.

Grants and loans to Seychelles fisher communities would be provided through the Blue Grants Fund and Blue Investment Fund, managed respectively by the Seychelles’ Conservation and Climate Adaptation Trust (SeyCCAT) and the Development Bank of Seychelles (DBS).

An archipelagic country in the western Indian Ocean, Seychelles has 115 granite and coral islands spreading across an exclusive economic zone of approximately 1.4 million square kilometers.

After tourism, the fisheries sector is the country’s most important industry, contributing significantly to annual GDP and employing 17 percent of the population, with fish products accounting for around 95 percent of the total value of domestic exports.

From right to left: Nico Barito (Special Envoy of the President of Seychelles), Vincent Meriton (Vice President of Seychelles), Laura Tuck (Vice President of World Bank Washington DC), James Michel (Former President of Seychelles), and Justin Mundy (World Resources Institute and former director of HRH The Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit).

According to Meriton, the idea of a blue bond was first floated under former president James Michel in 2011, but the concept for a blue bond to support a transition to sustainable fisheries was conceived in 2014 only with the help of HRH The Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit.

Since then, a World Bank team comprising experts from its Treasury, Legal, Environmental and Finance groups has worked with investors, structured the blue bond, and assisted the Seychelles government in setting up a platform for channeling its proceeds.

A joint statement issued by the Seychelles government and the World Bank said the blue bond is backed by a five million dollar guarantee from the World Bank and a five million dollar concessional loan from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). It will also pay an annual coupon of 6.5 percent to investors, but the GEF concessional loan would cut the cost to Seychelles to 2.8 percent.

The statement also said proceeds from the bond sales would finance the expansion of marine protected areas, improved governance of priority fisheries and the development of the Seychelles’ blue economy, and contribute to the World Bank’s South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Governance and Shared Growth Program, which supports countries in the region to sustainably manage fisheries and increase economic benefits from their fisheries sectors.

World Bank Vice President and Treasurer Arunma Oteh called the blue bond a milestone that complements other activities aimed at supporting sustainable use of marine resources, including particularly the fishery sector.

“We hope that this bond will pave the way for others …. The blue bond is yet another example of the powerful role of capital markets in connecting investors to projects that support better stewardship of the planet,” Oteh said in a joint statement.

World Bank Vice President of Sustainable Development Laura Tuck said the blue bond could serve as a model for other countries in mobilising funds to finance sustainable fisheries projects.

“The World Bank is excited to be involved in the launch of this sovereign blue bond and believes it can serve as a model for other small island developing states and coastal countries. It is a powerful signal that investors are increasingly interested in supporting the sustainable management and development of our oceans for generations to come,” Tuck said.

SeyCCAT Chief Executive Officer Martin Callow was quoted as saying that the bond would support the country’s ambitions to create a diversified blue economy.

“We are privileged to be working with the many partners involved in this unique transaction, and we are excited about the possibilities to back pre-development and growth stage projects in support of Seychelles’ blue economy. With these new resources, our guiding principles, and the blended finance structure that we have developed, we will support Seychelles’ ambitions to create a diversified blue economy and, importantly, to safeguard fisheries and ocean ecosystems,” said Callow.

Daniel Gappy, CEO of DBS, expressed similar sentiments and vowed to support the government’s quest for sustainable development. DBS will co-manage proceeds from the bond via the creation of the Blue Investment Fund.

“Establishing the Blue Investment Fund will bring additional exposure both locally and internationally for the bank and will provide opportunities to enhance our competency in fund management for positive environmental, social and governance outcomes,” said Gappy.

Meanwhile, Pietra Widiadi, Green and Blue Economy Strategic Leader at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia, said the blue bond offers huge potential as an alternative financing source, but many things need to be done to ensure the projects achieve their targets.

“Awareness on the importance of the blue economy is still relatively low in island nations, especially those in the south. For that reason, I think any blue bond project should start with building the capacity of people involved,” Widiadi told IPS.

Indonesia and other island nations, Widiadi said, could use Seychelles’ blue bond structure as a model in tapping the bond market for financing sustainable fishery and marine projects.

“Projects funded with blue bond, just like green bond, are rigidly regulated, but Seychelles’ blue bond can serve as a model on how we can move forward,” he said.

Edo Rakhman, a national coast and ocean campaigner for the Indonesian Forum for Environment or Walhi, a leading civil society organisation that champions environmental issues, hailed the world’s first blue bond but stressed that any sustainable fishery and marine project should start with protecting the rights of local fisher communities and mangroves along coastal areas.

“Island nations should designate fishing grounds or zones where all forms of extractive activities are prohibited and mangroves protected to ensure the sustainability of fish stock for local fishermen communities,” Edo said.

A woman works in her vegetable patch at the foot of Mount Sinabung, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) that cause global warming on our now beleaguered planet Earth.Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Oct 12 2018 (IPS)

Indonesia is convinced that low carbon development and a green economy are key to further boosting economic growth without sacrificing environmental sustainability and social inclusivity.

Low carbon development, also called low emission development strategies or low carbon growth plans, refers to economic development plans or strategies that promote low emissions and or climate-resilient economic growth.

“It is timely for Indonesia to put in place sustainable development principles that balance the economic, social and environmental aspects. In this context, the government of Indonesia has committed to become the pioneer of sustainable development by initiating the LCDI [Low Carbon Development Indonesia report] and at the same time, preparing and implementing green financing mechanisms,” minister of national development planning (BAPPENAS) Bambang Brodjonegoro said.

He was launching the LCDI report that spells out the country’s green development path at the “Conference on Low Carbon Development and Green Economy” organised by the Indonesian government on Thursday, Oct. 11.

Organised as part of the 2018 International Monetary Fund-World Bank Group Annual Meetings that run through Oct. 14, the conference was co-hosted by several international institutions that help Indonesia in mapping and designing green growth programmes, including the UK Climate Change Unit, the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), the Indonesian Climate Change Trust Fund, the New Climate Economy, and the World Resources Institute Indonesia.

The renewed stance towards green growth comes as the archipelago island nation is recovering from a 7.5 magnitude earthquake and a resultant tsunami that hit its Sulawesi Island on Sept. 28. There were an estimated 2,000 casualities.

It was followed Thursday Oct. 11 by another earthquake of 6.0 magnitude which hit the tourist area of Bali, where the current IMF-World Bank Group Annual Meetings are being held.

Indonesia is one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) that cause global warming on our now beleaguered planet Earth.

In 2012, Indonesia produced a total of 1,453 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCOe), an increase of 0,459 GtCOe from the year 2000, according to the first Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) Indonesia submitted to the United Nations. At least 47.8 percent of the country’s GHG emissions came from land-use change and forestry, including peatland fires, followed by emissions from the energy sector, at 34.9 percent.

In 2015, Indonesia set an ambitious target to reduce GHG emissions by 29 percent under the business-as-usual scenario, and by 41 percent with international assistance and financial support by 2030. The same target was put in the NDC submitted to the U.N. under the Paris Agreement, which seeks to slow down warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.

Marcel Silvius, GGGI Indonesia country representative at his office in Jakarta, Indonesia. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

“The pledge puts Indonesia in a vulnerable position,” Marcel Silvius, Indonesia Country Representative of GGGI, an inter-governmental organisation that supports the implementation of green growth in Indonesia, told IPS. “It sets the agenda for former, current, and future governments.

“That is very brave, it is something that is lacking in other governments. There are very strong positive signals that Indonesia is a country that other countries look at as an example and they want Indonesia to succeed,” he added

“Countries that are not so forthcoming in their pledges will receive less foreign collaboration. So, it is all positive for Indonesia. I think Indonesia is leading on certain fronts, one clearly is on the peat land restoration, only a few countries put so much emphasis on rehabilitation of this ecosystem, Indonesia is one and Russia is another,” Silvius said.

In September, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo instructed related ministries and regional governments to stop issuing new permits for oil palm plantations, which are often blamed for forest and peatland fires, and to review existing ones for possible revocation.

In January 2016, the government established the Badan Restorasi Gambut or Peatland Restoration Agency. Directly under the president, the agency is tasked with restoring 20,000 square kilometres of degraded peat forest by 2020.

“I think Indonesia in many respects has been braver compared to other countries such as the United States, [and] even Europe. Indonesia has taken the right steps that we don’t see in other countries, including in developed countries,” Silvius said.

He also praised Indonesia’s decision to organise the conference on low carbon development and the green economy during the IMF-World Bank Group Annual Meetings in Bali.

“The event gives a strong policy signal and creates a proper investment climate for organisations like the IMF and the World Bank and countries who are members of the World Bank and the IMF. The government also needs to give this kind of signals to the private sector,” Silvius told IPS in the interview in Jakarta.

The conference included panel discussions featuring several prominent speakers including former vice president Boediono, former trade minister Mari Elka Pangestu, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, CEO of Unilever and Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate Paul Polman, and LCDI Commissioner and Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate Lord Nicholas Stern.

During the discussions, the speakers and participants shared their knowledge on the green economy, including business models that incorporate inclusive development and GHG emission reductions and ensure maintenance and restoration of natural capital, sectorial financing priorities and challenges, as well as strategies on how to effectively implement low carbon development.

The LCDI serves as a guideline in designing a development plan. If followed accordingly, the framework is “expected to accelerate rapid economic growth, reduce the poverty rate, and decrease greenhouse gas” emissions.

“To underline this commitment of implementing LCDI, the ministry of national development planning will mainstream the LCDI report on low carbon development framework into our next five years 2020-2024 National Medium Term Development Plan. This will become the very first ever low carbon development plan in the history of Indonesia,” said Brodjonegoro.

Recent global research suggested that bold climate action could deliver 26 trillion dollars in economic benefits in the form of new jobs and better health outcomes globally from now to 2030, compared to the business-as-usual approach.

Frank Rijsberman, Director General of GGGI, explained that foreign and domestic capital was available for the development of green projects, but that private investors require a sound supportive policy framework to help de-risk their investments in innovative green projects.

“There needs to be a strong collaboration of trusted global institutions and leaders from government and the private sector that are committed to green growth. This can certainly bring a significant change, which is very much needed by Indonesia for a better, cleaner, and more prosperous future,” Rijsberman said.

Meanwhile, the World Bank hailed Indonesia’s implementation of its NDC but warned that the current policy framework was still a challenge.

“Indonesia is making significant strides in the implementation of its NDC, including in aspects of mitigation and adaptation. However, the current policy, regulatory, and governance framework for forested landscapes remains a challenge,” Ann Jeannette Glauber, lead Environment Specialist for the World Bank, told IPS via email.

The World Bank, Glauber said, has worked with the Indonesian government, private sector, and civil society to support the country’s efforts to move toward a green growth trajectory, including providing knowledge, partnership and financing support.

“We continue to stand ready to support the government of Indonesia with technical assistance and financing support to meet their green growth objectives at their request,” Glauber said.

And what is the way forward for the country? With all the pledges and programmes to cut gas emissions, Indonesia, according to Silvius, needs support.

“I don’t think any government in the world can do these things on their own including developed countries. There should be real collaboration and transfer of knowledge between countries, financial collaboration and assistance. Indonesia cannot do it on its own,” he said.

Peatland degradation in Indonesia has also caused a decrease in fish populations. Courtesy: Global Green Growth Institute

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Jul 25 2018 (IPS)

The South Asian nation of Indonesia is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouses gases (GHG) and is ranked as the world’s second-largest plastic polluter of oceans, just behind China. So when the country committed in the Paris Agreement to limit the rise in average global temperatures to below 2°C by unconditionally reducing its emissions by 29 percent with using its own finances and by 41 percent with international funding, many felt the goals too ambitious.

Climate Action Tracker, which produces scientific analysis measuring the actions governments propose to undertake in order to limit climate change impact, noted that Indonesia’s 2016 commitment actions to reduce GHG, are “highly insufficient.”

The World Resources Institute (WRI), in a study on what is required for the country to reduce its emissions as promised in the Paris Agreement, noted that more ambitious actions would be necessary in order to meet the targets – referred to as nationally determined contributions or NDCs.

“For Indonesia to achieve both its unconditional and conditional NDC targets, more-ambitious mitigation actions will be necessary. Our analysis suggests that the key areas of increased ambition should be strengthening and extending the forest moratorium policy, restoring degraded forest and peatland, and increasing energy conservation efforts,” WRI said.

The Global Green Growth Institute, which has a mandate to support emerging and developing countries develop rigorous green growth economic development strategies, has been assisting this Asian nation draw up its national green growth roadmap. GGGI focuses on assisting countries in achieving quality economic growth through less stress on the environment and natural capital.

“As the country aims to become a high-income country in the 2030s, continued rapid economic growth is required. Without adopting green growth approaches, Indonesia, already the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the largest contributor of forest-based emissions would only pollute the world more,” Indonesia deputy country representative Dagmar Zwebe told IPS.

However, private sector involvement, strengthening of national policies and regulation on land use are required to bring the country closer to its targets.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: GGGI helped Indonesia draw up its national Green Growth Programme. Tell us more about the roadmap and how you chose the priority sectors?

The roadmap helps Indonesia chart a course toward a sustainable economy and focuses on energy, sustainable landscape, and infrastructure. These priority sectors were selected based on multi-stakeholder consultations, involving many government agencies and ministries, including advice provided by the Green Growth Programme Steering Committee.

Q: Briefly, what green initiatives has GGGI introduced in each of the priority sectors?

At the policy level, the national government and two provincial governments are now working to mainstream green growth in planning processes. For projects, GGGI designed a hybrid solar photovoltaic (PV) project combining an existing diesel-based power grid with solar PV in eight locations in East Nusa Tenggara. The facilities would reduce diesel consumption by 236 million litres or the equivalent to a total reduction of 549,300 tonnes of CO2 emissions and potential savings for state-owned electricity company Perusahaan Listrik Negara of around USD125 million over 20 years.

In the forest and land-use sector, Central Kalimantan has now formed public-private partnerships for rewetting, replanting and revitalisation of peat landscapes, while in the infrastructure sector, GGGI helps develop bankable green infrastructure projects, especially in special economic zones.

Q: Has there been any difficulty faced in implementing the programme?

One of the difficulties faced is that often the general public, in all sectors, associate green developments with more work or more barriers, decreased returns, and slower developments.

Q: What is needed to drive private investment in green initiatives?

Just for example, the current administration has put infrastructure development as one of the country’s priorities. Based on the current plans, a total investment of USD400 billion is required in the transportation, energy, water and waste sectors over a five years period. While the government has allocated significant funding toward this goal, there is still a gap of USD150 billion to overcome.

This is where the private sector can come in and play an important role. That has not happened yet for various reasons, including the national political and regulatory environment, lack of healthy pipeline of high quality, green and inclusive bankable projects, and capacity limitations in the public, private, and financial sector.

Q: Under the Green Growth Programme, GGGI, in cooperation with government agencies, will train 30,000 civil servants on green growth.

An important aspect of the Green Growth Programme is to build systems and capacity in ways that can be replicated. This is done through the establishment and operations of a web-based green growth knowledge platform hosted by the Indonesian ministry of national development planning, which will extend support to initiatives in other provinces beyond the two current pilot provinces of Central and East Kalimantan. The knowledge platform was launched in July, and will be further built upon over the next few years.

GGGI is also working to strengthen capacity of stakeholders in the application of the extended cost benefit analysis tool, specifically in mainstreaming the tool into strategic environmental assessment methodologies, as part of the government of Indonesia’s development and spatial planning process.

Q: In the first phase, GGGI worked with the Central and East Kalimantan provinces on several green programmes. How have the programmes developed? 

Districts Murung Raya and Pulang Pisau in Central Kalimantan allocated USD8.8 million in 2015 to implement their green growth strategies, covering six key sectors: forestry, mining, plantation, aquaculture, energy and cross-sectorial developments.

GGGI has provided strong support for the development of the provincial general energy planning for East Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan. The plan followed the issuance of the General Plan for National Energy.

Q: Do you think Indonesia can achieve its targeted reduction of GHG emissions?

Indonesia has pledged to reduce emissions by 29 percent financed by its own resources and by 41 percent subject to international assistance by 2030. This is an ambitious target, but Indonesia is taking many steps to reach this. Even with all these efforts though, Indonesia is not yet on track to reach its targets.

However, further strengthening of the earlier mentioned national policies and regulations in the land-use and energy sectors, including the moratorium on new forest and peatland concessions, peatland restoration, renewable energy mix targets, social forestry and degraded forest land rehabilitation, could bring Indonesia much closer to their target.

– Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams

Excerpt:

A lab technician at the Disease Investigation Centre near Yogyakarta, Indonesia checks for the avian flu virus in samples taken from poultry. Credit: FAO

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jul 10 2017 (IPS)

Poultry farmer Bambang Sutrisno Setiawan had long heard about biosecurity but never gave serious thought to it, even when the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 forced him to cull thousands of his layer chickens in 2003 and 2009.

Eighteen years into the business, however, Bambang, who is called Ilung by friends, is now converting his second farm into a three-zone biosecurity poultry with a strong conviction that it is the only way to save his business amid continued threats of bird flu and other animal diseases.Indonesia detected its first bird flu case in 2003. Since then, the H5N1 virus has killed millions of poultry in 32 of the country’s 34 provinces.

“My second poultry biosecurity will soon operate, hopefully in July,” Ilung told IPS by phone from Semarang, Central Java, a one-hour flight east of the capital Jakarta, in mid-June.

The 44-year-old has two poultry farms, each accommodating around 30,000 layers, and one day-old chick site that can hold 10,000 chicks.

Ilung converted one of his farms into biosecurity poultry in November 2015 after attending seminars and trainings organized by local Livestock and Animal Health Services and Food and Agriculture Organization’s Emergency Center for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD).

Three-zone biosecurity is one of programs ECTAD Indonesia is promoting to contain the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) that continues to plague the country of 250 million people since its first detection in 2003.

The model divides a farm into three separate areas: a red zone for high disease risk external areas, yellow zone for medium risk service areas, and green zone for clean and highly secure access-restricted area where the chicken flock is located. Access from the red zone to the yellow zone requires showering and a complete change of clothing and footwear, while further inward access to the green zone requires a second change of footwear to maintain biosecurity standards.

According to Ilung, biosecurity keeps animal diseases out and cuts disinfectant and medicine costs by 30 percent and 40 percent, respectively.

“Production also rises to 60 kilograms per 1,000 layers now, compare to 50 kilograms previously, and more importantly, I have not had disease outbreaks since November 2015,” said Ilung.

In 2009, Ilung culled half of his layer chickens after bird flu struck his farms for the second time. Prior to that, the father of two was forced to prematurely sell 11,000 chickens to cut losses after 300 layers were found to have died of H5N1 in 2003. He has been in the poultry business since 1999.

Robby Susanto, a 62-year-old poultry farmer in Solo, Central Jaw said biosecurity has proven to bring a lot of benefits to poultry farmers like him.

“Our net profit has increased by between 11 percent and 35 percent since practicing biosecurity poultry,” he told IPS by phone from Solo, an 80-minute flight east of Jakarta.

Susanto started his poultry farming in 2010 after participating in ECTAD’s biosecurity pilot projects together with five other farmers.

“Biosecurity keeps avian influenza and other animal diseases out of his 100,000 layer chickens and help maintain production of five tons of eggs per day,” he said.

A study by ECTAD Indonesia shows that for every cent spent on three-zone biosecurity, poultry farmers gain as much as 12 cents in profit.

Ilung said he spent around 5,000 dollars for each biosecurity farm.

Indonesia has been listed as one of the global hotspots for human H5N1 avian influenza infections since 2005, prompting ECTAD to open an office in the country in 2006.

James McGrane, FAO ECTAD Indonesia Team Leader, at his office in Jakarta. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

“Since 2005, Indonesia has been one of the global epicenters for human H5N1 avian influenza infections with more human cases and fatalities than any other country until 2014,” James McGrane, ECTAD Indonesia Team Leader, told IPS in an interview in Jakarta.

Indonesia detected its first bird flu case in 2003. Since then, the H5N1 virus has killed millions of poultry in 32 of the country’s 34 provinces, disrupting the livelihoods of large numbers of people dependent on poultry-keeping, according to ECTAD Indonesia.

Up until 2017, the World Health Organization has recorded 199 confirmed human cases of avian influenza in Indonesia, with 167 deaths. That figure is the highest in the world, with Egypt coming in second with 120 deaths out of 359 cases, and Vietnam third with 64 deaths of 127 cases.

Negligence on the part of poultry farmers – not wanting to follow proper security standards – has been cited as the main reason human deaths were high in Indonesia.

Aside from promoting biosecurity, ECTAD Indonesia helped the central and local governments develop and implement a community-based Participatory Disease Surveillance and Response (PDSR) system to contain HPAI in backyard poultry in 32 provinces.

By 2015, PDSR had 2,500 trained officers working in 350 districts in 30 provinces. The system, according to McGrane, was able to detect and attend to over 10,000 HPAI outbreaks over the years.

“In 2009, following an evaluation of the PDSR system, greater emphasis was placed on working with the commercial poultry sector, and a program was initiated to strengthen relations with and surveillance in the commercial industry,” said McGrane.

Since 2012, ECTAD has helped implement biosecurity poultry in six pilot commercial layer chicken farms.

Fadjar Sumping Tjatur Rasa, Animal Health Director of the Livestock and Animal Health Directorate General of the Ministry of Agriculture, said biosecurity has succeeded in reducing avian influenza cases in Indonesia.

“We still have bird flu cases every year but their number has continued to decrease every year,” Fadjar told IPS on Tuesday, June 20, 2017.

The agriculture ministry recorded 255 H5N1 cases in 2016, compare to 123 cases in 2015, 343 in 2014, and 470 in 2013.

Indonesia suffered its worst avian influenza outbreak in 2007 with 2,751 confirmed cases before it went down to 2,293 cases in 2009 and 1,502 cases in 2010. The ministry of agriculture has so far recorded 94 cases in 2017.

Fadjar expressed optimism that bird flu cases would continue to fall now that Indonesia has adopted One Health approach in dealing with various human and animal diseases.

One Health recognizes that the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems are interrelated and thus any potential or existing health risk calls for collaborative efforts between health practitioners (including vets, doctors, public health officers, epidemiologists, ecologists, toxicologists) and related institutions to attain optimum health for people, animals, wildlife and the environment.

“Now the ministry of health alerts us [the Ministry of Agriculture] and other stakeholders if they suspect a patient is suffering from an avian influenza virus. We too have to inform the ministry of health and other stakeholders about suspected bird flu outbreaks,” said Fadjar.

ECTAD Indonesia also helped the government establish the Influenza Virus Monitoring (IVM) Online platform to monitor circulating HPAI and other influenza viruses. According to McGrane, since its launch in 2014, the platform has seen increases, among other things, in the number of H5N1 isolates being uploaded to IVM Online, isolates that have been antigenically and genetically characterized, and improved knowledge on circulating AI viruses in Indonesia.

“Influenza virus monitoring and characterization is crucial for the development of local vaccines, effective against the circulating strains of HPAI in Indonesia,” said McGrane, adding: “The selected challenge strains are used to test the efficacy of new vaccines developed by local commercial vaccine companies.”

“ECTAD today continues to support the control of HPAI and other endemic zoonotic diseases such as rabies and anthrax, while also focusing on new or re-emerging global health threats which spill over into humans from animal populations, such as Ebola, MERS-CoV and Zika,” said McGrane.

Aquaponics in Indonesia: Bumina and Yumina systems use an integrated farming technique combining vegetables, fruits and fish. Credit: FAO

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 31 2017 (IPS)

Fifty-two-year-old farmer Theresia Loda was effusive when asked how conservation agriculture has changed her economic situation.

“My corn harvest has increased fourfold per season since I started practicing conservation agriculture,” Loda told IPS by phone from Kalimbu Ndara Mane Village, Wejewa sub-district in Southwest Sumba District, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province, around a two-hour flight east of the capital Jakarta.“For us, the most important aspect is the increase in productivity, profitability, and resilience to climate change.” --Mark Smulders of FAO

Conservation agriculture encourages farmers to keep soil disturbance at a minimum. Instead of ploughing the field, farmers dig permanent planting holes and use compost instead of chemical fertilizer. They are also urged to grow cover crops such as legumes, and to rotate crops.

Loda started practicing conservation agriculture on a 2,800 square meter plot in early 2015. In the first season, she harvested around 500 kilograms of maize, compared to between 100 and 150 kilograms using traditional techniques. Her harvest soared up to 800 kilograms in the second season, before it went down to 600 kilograms in the October 2016-February 2017 season.

The widow and mother of 10 said she sold the maize to local people and used the money to send her children to school. In 2016, she sent her fifth child to study in a nursing academy in Malang, East Java province, one year after he graduated from senior high school.

Loda’s first and third children dropped out of school in grade five, while the second and fourth finished senior high school but were not able to go to academy or university due to financial constraints. Her sixth to ten children are still in senior high, junior high, and elementary schools.

In 2016, Loda, who separated from her second husband in 2010, used part of her maize income to buy piglets and rent a paddy field in order to augment her income. Her first husband passed away in 1994.

“I just sold two pigs to pay my fifth child’s tuition in Malang. Next week, we will harvest rice from our farm for the first time,” said Loda.

Mikhaela Imakulata, a 45-year-old farmer in Sikka District, shared Loda’s sentiment.

“We harvested around 2.6 tons in the first season, compared to 2.1 tons when using the traditional method,” the mother of two told IPS from Maumere, the capital of Sikka District, on Mar. 24.

Imakulata said she and her husband cultivated an area of over 1,100 square meters. Aside from corn, they also planted a wide range of bean varieties as cover crops.

“We just planted maize again immediately after we harvested the first planting. We want to find out how the weather will affect the crop,” she said.

Mark Smulders, FAO Representative for Indonesia and Timor Leste. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

Loda and Imakulata are two of almost 13,000 smallholder farmers in NTT and West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) who practice and benefit from conservation agriculture the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) introduced there in 2013 as part of its priority program of reducing disaster risks caused by changing climate in the country.

According to Ujang Suparman, FAO national project manager for NTT and NTB, conservation agriculture projects were also implemented in West Sumba, Central Sumba, East Suma, Sabu, Malaka, Timor Tengah Utara, Timor Tengah Selatan, Alor, Lembata, Nagekeo, and Ende, West Lombok, Central Lombok, East Lombok, North Lombok, and West Sumbaw.

“Smallholder famers in NTT and NTB are among the poorest in Indonesia. They are prone to the impacts of climate change, especially long dry spells and irregular rainfall,” Mark Smulders, FAO representative for Indonesia and Timor Leste, told IPS in an interview in Jakarta.

According to Smulders, conservation agriculture is a win-win situation. “On one hand, we conserve the soil, which means we protect the soil from the sun, preserve the moisture, bring in organic materials, and on the other hand, farmers boost production and at the same time are better protected against climate change,” he said.

Data provided by FAO Indonesia and Timor Leste show conservation agriculture has proven to increase maize yield from an average of 2.1 metric tons to 4.3 metric tons per hectare.

“For us, the most important aspect is the increase in productivity, profitability, and resilience to climate change,” said Smulders.

Aside from conservation agriculture, FAO Indonesia and Timor Leste also encouraged farmers here to try integrated rice-fish farming, locally known as mina padi, where part of the irrigated rice field is turned into fish ponds.

According to Smulders, while mina padi is quite different from conservation agriculture, both are trying to intensify production using an ecosystem approach with far less use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

“What we do in mina padi is we take part of the rice field and make it into fish ponds. But fish also swim in between the rice and eat all the pests, fertilize the rice with their feces, and in the end we get better yields, better income, and better nutrition because farmers do not only eat rice they harvest but also the fish,” said Smulders.

Around 37 percent of children under five in Indonesia are stunted as a result of chronic malnutrition in the first five years of their life. On top of that, some 20 million people, or almost eight percent of the country’s population of 260 million, simply do not have access to the basic dietary energy that they need.

“We would like to put emphasis on a healthy diet from the farm to the table. We would like to see farmers produce a healthy diet, not just rice but other products as well,” Smulders said.

Sigit Paryono, a 46-year-old farmer in Sleman District, Yogyakarta, said his net income has risen significantly since joining FAO’s mina padi program in 2015.

“I used to earn between 38 dollars and 76 dollars per 1,000 square meters, now around 226 dollars,” said Sigit, who claimed to have a half-hectare of rice field.

Sigit said since joining FAO’s program in 2015, he has earned enough money to buy another 5,000 square meters of rice field. “I also sent my two children to universities,” he said.

“I hope FAO would help farmers in post-harvest processing. We want to sell mina padi rice and fish ourselves but we cannot do it without any help from others,” Sigit said.

Pramono, head of the Food Security Division, Sleman Agriculture and Fishery Agency, said mina padi works for both commodities. Rice benefits from food leftovers and fish feces as fertilizers, while fish benefit from pests that serve as their food.

“With pests eaten by fish and their feces serving as fertilizer, farmers need no pesticides or chemical fertilizers,” said Pramono.

He said his office introduced the embryo of mina padi to local farmers in 2011. “In 2015, with financial assistance from FAO, they were able to form a cluster of 25 hectares of rice field. At least 20 percent of the rice field is allocated for fish ponds,” said Pramono.

“While planted rice fields decrease by 20 percent, yields increase by 30 percent on average. On top of that, farmers still harvest between two to five tons of fish per hectare,” Promono told IPS.

“Many young factory workers have resigned to participate in mina padi cultivation,” said Pramono, adding “The future of rice production is strong again now that young farmers are entering the sector.”

Rice-fish farming was also experimented with in West Sumatra province.

Smulders said both conservation agriculture and mina padi were in line with the Indonesian government’s plan to create over 1,000 organic villages. “All three techniques, including integrated pest management, could be useful technics to promote organic farming,” he said.

He also said that his office is having discussions with the central government on how to scale up conservation agriculture and rice-fish farming areas.

“We feel we don’t have the capacity. We have demonstrated the good practice. Now, we want the government to invest. It’s a good thing to promote the two,” Smulders said.

FAO, according to Smulders, would focus on how to minimize post-harvest losses through improved storage. Too often, he said, farmers sell corn and rice at harvest time so prices are low.

“We are planning to work on a storage facility” so farmers can keep their commodities and sell them at higher prices several months later, Smulders said.

Lenny N. Rosalin, Deputy Minister for Child Growth and Development of Indonesia’s Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 14 2017 (IPS)

The Indonesian government is tapping children as advocates against child marriage in this Southeast Asian country where over 340,000 girls get married before they reach 18 years old every year.

Lenny N. Rosalin, Deputy Minister for Child Growth and Development of the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, said her agency has been working with the National Child Forum across the country to explain the impacts of child marriage on health, education, and economic condition.“What is clear is that child marriage can be prevented if we explain its risks to children and parents." --Lenny N. Rosalin

National Child Forum, locally known as Forum Anak Nasional, is designed to be a venue for children under 18 years to air their aspirations on development programmes, from the planning to monitoring and the evaluation stage. According to its website, Forum Anak is now present in 33 of Indonesia’s provinces, 267 regencies and municipalities, 300 sub- districts, and 197 villages across the country.

“We are empowering children to be able to say no to child marriage and to tell other kids to do the same when asked to get married by their parents,” Rosalin told IPS in an interview in Jakarta.

Annually, around 340,000 Indonesian girls get married before they turn 18 years old, according to a survey published by the National Statistics Agency (BPS) in 2016. The publication, the first of its kind, was funded by the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The figure shows child marriage has fallen two-fold in the past three decades. However, according to the Council of Foreign Relations, Indonesia is one of ten countries in the world with the highest child marriage rate and the second after Cambodia in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The exact number of children engaged in child marriage is difficult to gauge, however, as most of them have no birth certificate to prove their age.

In 2013, at least 50 million children under 18 years had no birth certificates, or 62 percent of the country’s children of 85 million at that time, according to the Indonesian Commission on Child Protection (KPAI). Indonesian children under 18 years now stand at around 87 million.

Forum Anak members are also taught to alert the Women Empowerment and Child Protection office in their area if they feel they cannot convince peers to say no to parents who force them to get married.

“When we receive reports of children being forced to get married, we invite local religious leaders and influential figures to convince parents of child-bride-to-be to cancel the wedding,” said Rosalin.

She claimed the strategy has worked so far but could not give an estimate of how many children have been spared from that practice since January 2016, when her ministry was tasked with preventing and eradicating child marriage in Indonesia, saying they were yet to hold a national meeting to evaluate and collect data.

“What is clear is that child marriage can be prevented if we explain its risks to children and parents,” Rosalin said.

Indonesia’s 1974 marriage law sets the legal marriage age at 16 years old for girls and 19 years for boys, contradicting the child protection law that bans parents from marrying off children below 18 years old. Worse still, the legislation also allows children under 16 years to get married as long as their parents apply for and the state court grants dispensation to them.

Budi Wahyuni, deputy chairwoman of the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan), said ideally the legal marriage age should be raised to 21 years old, or at least 18 years as stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Under the current situation, however, the court must be selective in granting dispensation for children under 16 years old to get married.

“For example, a dispensation is given to a bride who is already pregnant only,” Wahyuni said.

The marriage law gives no clear stipulation under what circumstances the court may grant a dispensation to children under 16 years to get married.

Several child activists here filed a judicial review with the Constitutional Court in 2015, seeking to raise the minimum marriage age from 16 years to at least 18 years old. The court, however, threw out the petition, arguing that it was the domain of the House of Representatives (DPR).

There are many reasons why parents marry off their children. First and foremost is a long-held belief that it is better to become a widow as a child than to delay marriage, according to Listyowati, Executive Director of Kalyanamitra Foundation, a non-governmental organization that promotes the rights of women.

“Many people still think that when a girl already had her first menstruation, she is already mature and ready to become a wife and mother. In such communities, girls who delay marriage are branded as old virgins even if they are still under 18 years old,” said Listyowati.

“The term old virgin has such a negative connotation that both girls and their parents feel humiliated when called so, putting pressure on them to get married early. For them, it’s better to become a child widow than to delay marriage,” said Listyowati.

Poor families, according to Listyowati, see child marriage as a way to ease economic burden as the girl moves out and stays with her husband.

“The sad thing is parents who got married while they were still children tend to marry off their young kids also,” lamented Listyowati.

Child marriage carries several risks and consequences, including high maternal and infant mortality rate. Children who get married usually drop out of school immediately and engaging in sexual activity at a very young age also runs the risk of cervical cancer.

In 2015, Indonesia’s mother mortality rate was recorded at 359 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015, compared to only 228 in 2000. According to the National Population and Family Planning Board, at least 82 percent of the deaths involved young mothers aged 14 to 20 years old. Meanwhile, the country’s infant mortality rate stood at 22 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2015.

The Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection has also set up so-called Family Learning Centers, known by its Indonesian name Puspaga, at provincial and regency capitals and municipalities where government-appointed psychologists and psychiatrists provide free counseling, including the issue of child marriage.

On top of that, the government encourages schools, provinces, regencies, and municipalities to become more child-friendly, with indicators including 12-year mandatory schooling, zero child labor, and zero child marriage.

“When all children attend 12 years of mandatory education, then there will be no more child marriage or child labor,” said Rosalin of the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection.

“Around 1,400 schools around the country have pledged to become child-friendly schools,” she added.

Listyowati of Kalyanamitra Foundation praised the Indonesian government’s move to engage children in its campaign against child marriage in the country. However, the move may prove inadequate if the marriage law still allows children to get married.

“The move should be followed up with a change in legislation. The marriage law must be amended to raise legal marriage age to at least 18 years old,” Listyowati stressed.

“The government must start introducing sex education. I know it’s still a taboo to talk about sex education, especially to children. In fact, some quarters see it as a way to teaching children how to engage in sexual activities but children have to know the risks of engaging in sexual activities at a very young age,” she said.

Rosalin said her ministry has submitted the draft of a government regulation on marriage in lieu of law to the office of the Presidential Advisory Council to replace the current marriage law.

“The draft is seeking two things. First, we want to increase the legal marriage age to 21 years old, or at least 18 years old, and secondly, scrap any sort of dispensation that may give room to child marriage,” Rosalin said.

Volunteers taking on fires at Garung village in Pulang Pisau district, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Credit: Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Indonesia

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Oct 10 2015 (IPS)

A regional agreement on managing transboundary haze caused by fires raging in Indonesia’s forests and peatlands appears all but buried in the embers of frustration of its neighbouring countries.

Nearby Singapore and Malaysia, apart from eastern Indonesia, have been hardest hit by the haze, which has been sending air pollution indices soaring to unhealthy levels for more than a month now. In recent days, the winds have blown the haze to southern Thailand as well.

In parts of Southeast Asia, a pall of grey hangs over the skies from morning until dusk, and scenes of residents walking around with masks have become common.

Over the past month or so, schools have been closed at some point, flights delayed or outdoor activities cancelled or limited, with warnings about the risks to children and the elderly, as countries asked Indonesia, with whom they are members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to address the burning of forests and land in eastern Indonesia.

After months of digging in its heels and saying it can manage on its own, the Indonesian government was quoted as saying this week it believes foreign help would be needed to put out the fires.

“This has proven quite a challenge for us, so we see it as a necessity to work together with countries that have the available resources to extinguish the fires,” foreign ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said on Oct. 8. He said Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno LP Marsud, had talked to Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, China and Australia “to discuss cooperation initiatives to overcome fire hotspots.”

But in these discussions about the fires there has hardly been any mention of the 1997 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, a legally binding agreement among the 10 member countries of the organisation. These are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In truth, activists say, they did not have much hope in the ASEAN haze agreement and ASEAN’s ability – or will – to hold its members to its own commitments.

“The agreement is said to be legally binding, but ASEAN has no court to try offenders,” said Nur Hidayati, head of the advocacy department of the Indonesian Forum for Environment, known by its Indonesian acronym WALHI. She added that the haze accord would likely meet the same fate as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, which activists see as weak.

Yet this year would have been an opportunity to show the teeth of the haze agreement, which ASEAN has long held up as an example of successful regional cooperation. The haze agreement was the world’s first regional arrangement that binds a group of states to tackle transboundary pollution from land and forest fires.

After years of resistance, Indonesia – whose inability to control the fires for nearly two decades has been an irritant in its ties with its neighbours – finally ratified the haze agreement in September 2014 and became legally bound by it. That is 12 years after Indonesia signed it with other ASEAN countries in 2002, a fact that has raised doubts about ASEAN’s ability to enforce its own decisions.

ASEAN countries are also moving toward deeper economic integration and launching the ASEAN Community in December 2015, but addressing transboundary tensions continue to challenge the 48-year-old organisation.

“If the most powerful three members of ASEAN (Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia) are not able to address a recurring and predictable problem (haze), what hope does the region have for economic integration with the ASEAN Economic Community that is going to be finalized end of this year?” asked a September commentary in the Jakarta Post newspaper by Joseph Cherian of the Centre for Asset Management Research and Investments, Jack Loo of Think Business and Ang Swee Hoon of the National University of Singapore Business School.

Singapore and Malaysia have repeatedly offered assistance to put out the raging fires, but Indonesia’s officials until recently said they could manage on their own.

“For the time being, we are only thinking of exhausting all of our internal resources before seeking external assistance,” J S George Lantu, director of ASEAN functional cooperation of the Indonesian foreign ministry said in an interview earlier in October. “We really appreciate their offers of help, but as a sovereign state we don’t want to seek to external help without trying hard enough to put out the fires. We can handle the fires ourselves,” the diplomat said.

But Indonesia is showing “complete disregard for our people, and their own,” Singapore Foreign Minister K Shanmugan told the British Broadcasting Corporation earlier in October.

The head of the environment division of the Jakarta-based ASEAN secretariat, which oversees the implementation of the ASEAN haze agreement, said Indonesia’s responses to the fires were in line with the accord. “Obviously, Indonesia can deal with the fires with its own resources,” division head Ampai Harakunarak said. “All member states are standing by, ready to receive requests from Indonesia.”

The accord aims to “prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollution as a result of land and/or forest fires which should be mitigated, through concerted national efforts and intensified regional and international cooperation.” It requires parties to “cooperate in developing and implementing measures to prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollutions as a result of land and/or forest fires” and “to control sources of fires.”

In truth, “Indonesia ratified the agreement under strong protest from Singapore and Malaysia over haze pollution. It (the ratification) was more as a political gesture than a statement of intent,” said WALHI’s Hidayati.

Significantly, Article 12.2 of the agreement says that external assistance “can only be employed at the request of and with the consent of the requesting party, or when offered by another party or parties, with the consent of the receiving party.”

President Joko Widodo had instructed government agencies to handle the fires in peatlands and forest being cleared by plantations for products like palm oil or paper. Foreign companies run many of them, prompting Singapore’s National Environmental Agency to name five companies with Indonesian concessions suspected to be contributing to the haze.

The Singapore Environment Council and Consumers Association of Singapore have urged consumers to use only products of companies that do not use burning practices in Indonesia.

Satellite images show that 70 per cent of hotspots in Sumatera and Borneo islands in Indonesia are in local plantations. Some 1.7 million hectares of land, more than a third of which are on peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan, have been burned, Widodo said.

Clearly, Indonesia has a lot of cleaning up to do of the concessions it gives to plantation companies and enforcing of local laws, critics say.

Land and/or forest fires have plagued Indonesia annually over the past 18 years due to unprecedented expansion of pulp and paper companies and oil palm plantations and their conversion into easy-to-burn peatlands, according to WALHI.

“By nature, tropical rain forests are impossible to burn due to high humidity. However, when trees are felled and a monoculture system is introduced in oil palm and rubber plantations or forest estates, their humidity disappears and they become vulnerable to fires,” Hidayati said.

Government officials say they have frozen some oil palm and forest concessions, adding that they have fined some companies and that others are awaiting trial. “Previously, we only charged individuals or corporates violating the 2009 environmental law in criminal and civil courts. Since January 2015, however, we also impose administrative sanctions on them by either freezing or revoking their concessions,” said Muhammad Yunus, director of the criminal law enforcement division of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

But the government must review all forest and plantation concessions to determine whether companies can handle fires, Hidayati said. “A fire that breaks out in a plantation or forest estate should been seen as a concession holder’s inability to manage the land and thus serve as a ground to revoke the concession, regardless who sets it or whether or not it’s deliberate.”

Untung Suprapto, head of the land and forest fire control sub-directorate of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, said his office is drafting a regulation that would require plantation and forest concession holders to have own firefighter teams, trucks and equipment.
(End)

Excerpt:

Rural Indonesian women selling jackfruit crackers. Photo: Abigail Lee/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
SUBANG, Indonesia, Jun 24 2013 (IPS)

When 45-year-old Kaswati joined an income-generating project in her village in Indonesia’s West Java province in 1999, all she hoped to do was supplement her family’s income at a time of erratic harvests.

But today, 14 years later, her fertiliser and jackfruit cracker businesses have far exceeded those modest plans: they have become the main sources of income for her family of four and are helping to offset the expenses of maintaining their half-hectare rice field.

Water scarcity over the past few years has forced the farming family to “draw water from faraway irrigation canals”, meaning they spend more on pumping water, and on labour, Kaswati told IPS in Pogon, a village in the Subang district of West Java province, a two-hour drive from the capital, Jakarta.

The shortage has also “limited planting opportunities to two each year instead of three, as suggested by the government,” the farmer said, adding that her compost and cracker businesses have “come to (my family’s) rescue.”

“I’ve got an outstanding order to supply 348 tonnes of compost fertiliser this year and since I cannot meet the demand all by myself, I have asked my friends to make compost and sell it to me.”

She buys the compost at an average price of 51 dollars per tonne and sells it for 77 dollars per tonne, thus making a tidy profit while also supporting members of her community.

Kaswati is just one of the many women in Pogon to benefit from an income-generating project that was partially funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in order to help this Southeast Asian archipelago nation tackle the impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector.

Under the programme, which ran from 1999 to 2006, each woman was given a bank loan, worth about 40 dollars, as capital to start a business. The loan carried an interest rate of one percent and had to be repaid in 12-month installments.

When the programme ended in 2006, Kaswati and her fellow women villagers ventured into the compost business. Along the way, however, all but Kaswati abandoned the fertiliser trade. In 2008, Kaswati began a jackfruit cracker business, together with 24 other women in the village.

“The programme taught us how to start and manage a business in order to make a profit. We also learned about bookkeeping,” Kaswati recalled.

Climate change hits hard

Indonesia’s agricultural sector provides 87 percent of raw materials for small and medium-scale industries, contributes 14.72 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), and employs 33.32 percent of the total labour force.

Due to its geographical situation, Indonesia is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change including increased droughts and floods, changes in planting patterns, and increased pests, all of which threaten the country’s food security, according to Hari Priyono, secretary-general of Indonesia’s ministry of agriculture.

“Indonesia has been focusing on increasing rice production from 54.1 million tonnes in 2004 to 69.05 million tonnes in 2012,” Priyono said in his keynote remarks at an early June media workshop on climate change, which was part of an IFAD series for journalists.

“Agricultural development faces increasingly serious challenges due to climate change as well as conversion of fertile agricultural land for industrial estates and settlements,” he continued.

Prolonged drought and an extended rainy season have struck Indonesia more frequently in recent years, leaving farmers in a quandary over when to start planting crops and causing worries about the country’s food security.

In early June, for example, climate experts here predicted that Indonesia would experience rain throughout 2013, even during the dry season that usually runs from May to September or early October.

Given the changes in climate patterns, the ministry of agriculture introduced in 2012 a ‘cropping calendar’ that advises farmers on the best planting periods, seed variety, fertilisers and pesticides. It has launched new rice varieties that can withstand prolonged drought or flooding, or high salinity due to seawater intrusion.

One expert, however, says these innovations may prove insufficient to deal with the impacts of climate change.

“The problem is we don’t have the technology yet that can predict the exact beginning of each dry or wet season or the severity of floods and drought,” said Zulkifli Zaini, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) liaison scientist for Indonesia.

To make things worse, almost 100,000 hectares of fertile farmland on the island of Java are being converted into industrial estates and settlements every year.

“Rice fields on Java island yield twice the amount produced by rice fields outside Java and this means that the government has to create 200,000 hectares of rice fields outside Java just to cover the loss (of these converted lands),” Zaini said.

According to IFAD, around 70 percent of Indonesia’s 245 million people live in rural areas, where agriculture is the main source of income. A least 16.6 percent of the country’s rural people are poor.

“Millions of small farmers, farm workers and fishers are materially and financially unable to tap into the opportunities offered by years of economic growth,” IFAD’s country manager for Indonesia, Ronald Hartman, said.

But Kaswati’s experience seems to show that diversifying means of income can help rural villagers continue to make a decent living from agriculture.

Kaswati’s businesses have only grown bigger. Early this year, she took out a bank loan worth 4,100 dollars to finance her compost business, which has given her financial freedom and power.

“I no longer ask my husband for money to buy food and other household needs, and more importantly my first daughter now studies at a university,” said Kaswati, who until early 1999 had worked as a farm labourer.

Another woman participant who declined to give her name told IPS that her jackfruit cracker business has allowed her to send her children to school.

“My first child finished elementary school only, my second only finished junior high school, while the third only senior high school – but the fourth is now studying at a local university,” she said.

“Now my husband involves me in decision-making, particularly when it comes to my children’s studies.”

Farmers in Indonesia’s West Java province follow instructions on the government’s “integrated planting calendar”. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 29 2013 (IPS)

Last October, at the beginning of Indonesia’s rainy season, a 37-year-old farmer named Herinurdin took a leap of faith. Instead of planting corn in his entire 1.3-hectare rainfed farm in the Sukabumi town of West Java, as his family had done for generations, he sowed 1,600 square metres worth of rice instead.

In November he ploughed another 700 square metres and by December he had seeded the remainder of his land in this densely populated province, some 120 kilometres south of the capital Jakarta.

“The rice (planted in December) is now flowering,” Herinurdin told IPS. “I harvested 750 kilogrammes of unhusked rice from that 1,600 square metres.”

Until last year, he had always used the farm for corn or peanut “because I did not know that rice could grow in the rainfed field”.

With rice selling for 0.36 dollars per kilogramme, against the going rate for corn of 0.8 dollars per kilogramme, Herinurdin took in more money this year than he can ever remember.

Herinurdin is one of the earliest beneficiaries of a government programme launched last year aimed at easing the impacts of climate change on the roughly 41.2 million farmers spread across this archipelago.

Indonesia has been scrambling to find solutions to irregular rain patterns that have made farmers’ lives a living hell. Excessive rain, floods, and prolonged drought ferquently hit the world’s largest archipelago, home to 242 million people, undermining national food security programmes.

Agriculture plays an important role in Indonesia’s economy, with around 18 million farmer households and five million peasants dependent on the sector for livelihood, according to the state Central Statistics Agency (BPS).

“The planting calendar is designed to deal with adverse impacts of climate change, particularly changes in rain patterns that directly affect the planting season,” Eleonora Runtunuwu, a researcher with IAARD, told IPS.

It also contains information about suitable planting weeks for each of Indonesia’s 6,501 districts in 33 provinces; crops and seed varieties appropriate for certain planting seasons; fertilisers required for recommended crops; and potential scourges such as pest attacks.

In drawing up the calendar, the IAARD, which falls under the Ministry of Agriculture, takes into account weather forecasts issued by Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BKMG), the agriculture ministry’s Automatic Weather Station, and the Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model of Australia.

The agency divides the year into three planting periods: the rainy season that runs from October to February; the first dry season from March to May; and finally, the second dry season from June to September. The calendars are issued in August, February, and May respectively.

Besides publishing the calendar online, the ministry has dispatched tens of thousands of field experts to advise farmers on what crops to plant, how to take care of them and when to fertilise.

But results have so far been patchy, and the iniative has illicted harsh reviews across the country.

Flaws abound

Nandang Sunandar, head of the West Java Agricultural Research and Development Agency (BPTP), praised the planting calendar but lamented the fact that the government cannot force farmers to follow the guidelines.

“The calendar only gives recommendations to farmers on crops, seeds, and fertiliser. Farmers have the final say; they may or may not follow (our) advice,” Nandang told IPS from Bandung, the provincial capital of West Java.

Others, like Tejo Wahyu Jatmiko, coordinator of the Alliance for Prosperous Villages, charge that the calendar has not been communicated adequately to farmers.

“The more detailed the weather information is, the better for farmers and the calendar is doing just that – however, farmers have little knowledge about the calendar, forcing them to stick to traditional schedules that result in crop failures due to prolonged drought or excessive rains,” he said.

“Most farmers here are following our traditional planting calendar, which we believe to be more reliable for our area,” said Astono. Known locally as ‘pranta mangsa’ this calendar takes its cues from animal behaviours, plants, the sun’s position, and ancient wisdom on astronomy.

“Our calendar takes into account not only the beginning or end of the rainy season and rain intensity, but also cycles of pest and rat attacks based on our experiences,” he told IPS, adding that some farmers who follow the government’s calendar have often experienced crop failures due to unanticipated pest attacks.

Experts who believe farmers themselves should have been consulted in the development of the calendar say that traditional wisdom is being lost.

“Farmers should be involved in designing food-related programmes because they have knowledge of the local environment,” Said Abdullah, manager of the People’s Coalition Network for Food Security, told IPS.

Another hurdle to full implementation of the planting calendar is a shortage of seed.

“Often farmers simply cannot find seeds recommended by the calendar, prompting them to use any seed available in the market and completely ignoring our advice,” Nandang said.

According to Abdullah, few farmers can afford to buy the subsidised fertiliser and seeds recommended by the calendar. “In the end, they borrow money from loan sharks,” he said, which pushes prices even higher.

Though the government has assigned state-owned enterprises to distribute seeds and fertiliser throughout the country, the combination of poor coordination and extreme weather results in late deliveries, causing farmers to miss crucial planting dates.

“All seeds and fertilisers are imported from Java. When the sea is too rough for cargo ships to sail, we have no access to recommended seeds, (leaving) us with no choice but to use any low-quality seeds available,” said Adrianus Asia Sidot, a farmer from the Landak regency, a major rice-producing area in West Kalimantan.

Nandang also said that a dearth of field officials to explain the planting calendar and assist farmers in the lead-up to the harvesting period also slows down effective implentation.

“West Java province has only 6,000 field officials, far below its real need of at least 10,000,” he said.

Senior field official Titiek Maryati of Majalengka, West Java, added that his regency relied on just 395 field officials overseeing 2,336 farmers’ groups spread across over 100,000 hectares of rice fields in 2012.

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Mudjayin holds up a copy of a document identifying him as a former political detainee. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Nov 29 2012 (IPS)

At the age of 82, former Indonesian political detainee Mudjayin wonders if he will ever see justice served.

Back in 2010, he, along with other victims of state terror, submitted their case to the recently formed human rights commission of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Two years later, they have still not received official recognition of their complaint, suggesting that the rights body lacks the necessary power or political will to carry out its mandate.

“We have still not heard anything on what they did with our report,” said Mudjayin, one of tens of thousands of Indonesians rounded up by the military following the coup attempt on Sep. 30, 1965 that saw seven army generals killed.

The army blamed that abortive coup on the Indonesian Communist Party and embarked on a campaign of mass killings, which, in the following days and weeks, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of alleged communists.

That bloody chapter in Indonesia’s history also saw the rise of Suharto as the architect of the ‘New Order’ dictatorial regime, which held power for more than three decades.

Speaking to IPS at his house in Tebet, South Jakarta, Mudjayin recalled that he was arrested without a warrant in October, 1965 and held for 14 years as a Class B detainee – meaning that no evidence to link him with the Indonesian Communist Party or the September coup had ever been established – without ever being formally charged and tried.

He was finally released in 1979, but did not demand justice until after former president Suharto stepped down in May 1998 amid massive public protests.

Aided by rights groups such as the National Committee for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), Mudjayin and other former political detainees have been seeking justice for over a decade, to no avail.

The creation of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) in 2009, the first regional rights body of an organisation that had traditionally avoided addressing issues that were seen as domestic internal matters, provided him a fresh channel through which to seek redress for his wrongful imprisonment.

Mudjayin was joined by parents and relatives of students shot dead during anti-government protests in Indonesia in 1998 and 1999, relatives of pro-democracy activists kidnapped in 1997 and 1998, relatives of 32 journalists slain in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao in 1999, and some human rights victims from Burma.

At the time the complaint was submitted, all 10 rights commissioners representing each of the ASEAN member countries – Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – were in Jakarta to attend their first official meeting after being appointed in October 2009.

But none showed up to meet the victims, let alone to receive their complaint, Mudjayin recalled.

A limited mandate

According to Indonesian Human Rights Commissioner Rafendi Djamin, “We (AICHR) are not mandated to deal with individual claims.”

Set up in October 2009, AICHR is tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms of ASEAN peoples, enhancing regional cooperation on the promotion and protection of human rights, and upholding international human rights standards.

Rights defenders in Southeast Asia hailed the foundation of the Commission but have lamented its limited power to carry out its own mandate.

“AICHR has been given very weak terms of reference that limit its mandates, authority and powers to promote and protect human rights,” said Yap Swee Seng, executive director of the Bangkok-based Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development.

The commission’s effectiveness was further undermined when “some member states appointed government officials to the commission as their representatives, rather than independent human rights experts”, he continued.

Now, eight of the ten commissioners are government officials or diplomats. The only two independent experts are Indonesia’s Djamin, a human rights activist, and Thailand’s Sriprapha Petcharamesree, an academic.

This development has rendered the commission “institutionally problematic”, according to Kontras Coordinator Haris Azhar. “The fact that AICHR reports to the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) indicates that the commission is not independent and that it serves as an auxiliary body to AMM,” Azhar said.

Proponents of the rights body such as Danny Chian Siong Lee, director of community affairs development in the ASEAN secretariat based here in the Indonesian capital, lauded the Commission’s efforts vis-à-vis the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, which was adopted at the organisation’s summit in Cambodia earlier this month.

The declaration lists civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; the right to development and the right to peace.

But this, too, has been the topic of much debate among Southeast Asia’s rights activists, who have criticised the draft as being too weak and setting standards that fall short of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For Rena Herdiyani of the Women’s Crisis Centre ‘Mitra Perempuan’, the inclusion of the right to development is the document’s only saving grace, “making it different from the Universal Declaration on Human Rights”, she said.

But she also called attention to the declaration’s caveat that “the realisation of human rights must be considered in the regional and national context bearing in mind different political, economic, legal, social, cultural, historical and religious backgrounds”, making the exercise of fundamental rights highly subjective.

Further, the declaration “does not protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people or the rights of indigenous people”, Herdiyani added.

Yap criticised the commission’s lack of transparency. “The performance of AICHR in the first two years (2010 to 2011) has been unfortunately very poor, marked by an extreme lack of transparency and consultation with stakeholders in the process as well as the content of its work,” he said.

“This has been illustrated by the non-disclosure of any documents that the AICHR has adopted since its establishment in 2009, including its annual report to the ASEAN foreign ministers in 2011,” Yap added.

He also called on ASEAN to review AICHR’s terms of reference to make it truly independent with the necessary mandates and powers. “The ASEAN member states also need to provide adequate resources and financial autonomy for the AICHR to function effectively,” Yap added.

And while the rights body confronts its teething troubles, people like Mudjayin continue to wait for justice.

*This story was produced through IPS Asia-Pacific’s ‘Reporting Development in ASEAN‘series, made possible by the support of the International Development Research Centre.

Indonesia’s Sustainable Food Home Area programme is helping farmers like Misradi grow tomatoes in his own backyard. Credit: Jayneandd/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, May 31 2012 (IPS)

Misradi, a 58-year-old farmer from the Jelok neighborhood in Pacitan, East Java, some 524 kilometres east of Jakarta, has found a way to reduce his monthly expenses by 30 percent: instead of buying produce from the local market, he and his family now harvest most of their vegetables from their own yard.

Jelok, a neighbourhood of 126 families in Pacitan, the hometown of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was chosen in February 2011 as the location for the pilot project of the Sustainable Food Home Area, a programme initiated by the Ministry of Agriculture aimed at mitigating impacts of climate change on the country’s food security.

Known here by its Indonesian acronym KRPL, the programme encourages all residents of participating neighbourhoods to plant medicinal herbs and alternative food crops to meet their own needs. Residents with 200-square-metre yards or larger are also encouraged to farm fish and poultry and rear animals, particularly goats.

Misradi opted to grow tomatoes, chilis, eggplant, spinach, and mustard greens in his 300-square-metre plot.

Misradi, who lives with his wife, two children and grandchild, told IPS the programme enables him to save 16 dollars a month, almost 30 percent of his monthly income of 54 dollars.

“Other families are able to save as much as 32 dollars per month,” said Misradi, who coordinates the Jelok residents participating in the programme.

Mitigating climate change

Indonesia is striving to adapt to adverse impacts of climate change. The world’s largest archipelagic country of over 13,000 islands, Indonesia is believed to be one of the most vulnerable countries to the catastrophes caused by global warming.

Already, the weather patterns are shifting, making it difficult for farmers to determine when to plant crops, while irregular drought and rainfall has caused crop failures, raising concerns about food security in the country of 242 million people.

The country’s rice production, for example, declined by 1.13 percent in 2011, compared to a 3.2 percent increase in 2010, due to extreme weather, forcing the government to import 1.9 million tonnes of rice, compared to 1.8 million tonnes in 2010, according to the Central Statistics Agency.

The agency also predicts that the country’s population will reach roughly 244 million in 2012, up from 241 million in 2011, and 236 million in 2010.

“Climate change is putting pressure on the country’s agriculture sector as reflected in lower rice production,” said Nono Rusono, director of food and agriculture at the Ministry of National Development Planning.

The agriculture sector employs at least 43 million people and, together with forestry and fishery, contributed 13.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010.

Haryono, head of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Agency for Agricultural Research and Development, which is in charge of KRPL, said the programme hopes to ensure food security and food self-sufficiency for every family in the country, promote food diversification based on local resources, preserve local food resources, and enhance people’s prosperity.

“The programme is developed on the conviction that national food security builds on family food security,” Haryono said.

Encouraged by the success of pilot projects, Yudhoyono declared KRPL a national programme in February 2012 and appealed to provincial governments to make it a priority.

The government has also taken steps towards mitigation and adaption, including efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission by 26 percent by 2020.

To ensure food security, the government has encouraged the development of new rice fields. Rusono said the government helped develop 62,000 hectares of new rice fields in 2011 and plans to develop 100,000 hectares in 2012 and another 100,000 hectares in 2013.

“Our target is to achieve a rice surplus of 7.478 million tonnes in 2013 and 10 million tonnes in 2014,” Rusono said.

Government ‘indifferent’ to small-scale producers

Witoro, chairman of the NGO People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty, welcomed the KRPL programme but warned that its success depends on whether or not the government is willing to help market people’s products.

“When people produce the same products at the same time, there will certainly be excess and unless the government helps market the excess products the people could get disappointed and abandon the programme,” he cautioned.

Over all, according to Witoro, the current government has little, if any, political commitment to ensuring food security, let alone food sovereignty.

“The government has no clear long-term target or (vision) – no projected numbers of people and their food needs – on how to ensure food security,” he said.

“The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) and the Master Plan for Acceleration and Expansion Development both prioritise commodities in high demand and require huge investment – they reflect the government’s indifference to small-scale food producers,” Witoro said.

At least 36 domestic and foreign private companies have been given permits to cultivate more than two million hectares of land in Merauke, Papua province through the MIFEE. When completed, the estate is expected to produce 1.95 million tonnes of rice, 937,000 tonnes of corn, 167,000 million tonnes of beans, 64,000 cows, 2.5 million tonnes of sugar and 937,000 tonnes of crude palm oil every year.

The Master Plan for Acceleration and Expansion Development, on the other hand, aims to make Indonesia one of the world’s 10 major economies by 2025 by, among other things, encouraging the private sector to play a major role in economic development, particularly in the area of infrastructure. The plan, which was launched in May 2011, also promises fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to the private sector.

According to the activist, the government’s overreliance on big corporations and imports shows a lack of political commitment to develop the country’s food security.

“The government must engage small food producers like farmers in the country’s food security programme. However, to do that the government must introduce land reforms, as virtually all of the country’s farmers have only between 2,000 and 3,000 square metres of farm and that is barely enough to support their life,” Witoro concluded.

(END)

Clutching a plastic bag containing a tree sapling in his right hand and a slim notebook in his left, 11-year-old Rizki Fauzi is the picture of a young climate change expert.

“I will plant this seedling in my school to catch carbon emissions and prevent erosion,” said the fifth- grade student at the state-owned Karet Tengsin Elementary School in Central Jakarta, busily consulting his notes

Rizki, together with 24 other students from his school, recently attended the four-day climate change education forum and expo from Apr. 19-22, organised by the Indonesian National Council on Climate Change (DNPI), as part of efforts to raise environmental awareness ahead of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, that will take place in Brazil from Jun. 20-22.

The convergence, which marks the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, will focus on two primary themes: a green economy within the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and the institutional framework for sustainable development.

In July 2011 Indonesia hosted a high-level dialogue on the latter topic, with the aim of drafting concrete proposals to be presented at Rio+20. In September of that year, the country organised the Tunza International Children and Youth Conference on the Environment that brought together more than 1,000 youth participants from around the world to generate input for Rio+20.

Rizki and his classmates were briefed on the importance of planting trees to capture carbon dioxide, the most deadly greenhouse gas produced primarily by the combustion of fossil fuels, and forest fires.

At the end of the forum, students were invited to take home a sapling each to be planted in their schools or homes.

Urgent need for awareness

An archipelagic country comprised of about 13,000 islands, Indonesia has been increasingly plagued by a host of deadly climate-related hazards, including floods, drought, landslides, and forest fires.

The country’s annual rainfall has also fallen by two to three percent, while seasonal changes have made it difficult for farmers to decide when to plant crops, a situation that is threatening the country’s food security.

A 2007 World Bank report named Indonesia as the planet’s third largest emitter, with annual carbon dioxide emissions standing at 3,014 billion tonnes, trailing only the United States – the world’s top emitter – with 6,005 billion tonnes, and China with 5,017 billion tonnes.

DNPI Chairman Rachmat Witoelar, a former environment minister, suggested that lack of awareness among local government officials may compromise the country’s efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.

“Local administrations are still reluctant to promote public transportation, while the people in general don’t want to use public transportation or join car pools going to work,” said Witoelar, who is also the presidential special envoy on climate change.

However, for Rukdi, the principal of Karet Tengsin Elementary School who dutifully accompanied his students to the expo in Jakarta, the challenge lies in convincing parents to take the first step in educating the next generation about solutions to the climate crisis.

Children as agents of change

According to Amanda Katili Niode, communications, information, and education coordinator of the DNPI, the forum and expo were part of efforts to educate, empower, and engage all stakeholders on policies relating to climate change as stipulated in Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“We invited at least 5,000 elementary and high school students from the Greater Jakarta area. Many other schools have organised their own trips,” she said, adding that the number of visitors was expected to reach 50,000 people, compared to 30,000 in 2011.

Most of the 75 exhibition participants were government departments and local governments, showcasing activities conducted under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programmess funded by, among others, AusAID, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

M. Wahyu Rozhy, a student of the state-owned 109 Junior High School in East Jakarta, said he learned a lot about climate change and its impacts on humans during the visit.

“This is my first trip to this kind of exhibition and I am really happy. Now I know more about climate change and what we can do to mitigate its effects,” said the eighth-grader.

“I want to introduce recycling in my school. I will discuss the idea with my teachers first and hopefully they will support me,” said Rozhy, who was disturbed by the fact that most students at his school dump all types of trash in the same rubbish bins.

One booth at the exhibition displayed a clean batik initiative, a project funded by the European Union and the German government to encourage batik companies to use gas stoves and natural colours instead of wood and chemical dyes; while a British Council-sponsored stand displayed a local bicycle that produces and saves electrical energy.

The state-owned oil company PT Pertamina exhibited technology that converts coal into gas, while the publicly-listed mining company PT Aneka Tambang showcased a successful reclamation project at its mining site. Other stalls highlighted the environmental benefits of recycling and organic farming.

“We’ve just learned that our paper and books come from trees and that the more papers we use or waste, the more trees are cut down,” Vania Mailia, a tenth-grade student at the state-owned 6 Vocational School in South Jakarta, told IPS.

Luniar Aulia Rachmah, Vania’s classmate, said she learned that cutting trees would not only releases more carbons into the atmosphere but also deprives humans of oxygen.

Organisers challenged the students to have mock passports stamped with the words CLIMATE CHANGE 2012 in order to get a goody bag.

With each booth holding just one letter or number stamp, the students had to visit various stalls, whose representatives insisted on explaining their initiatives and posing environment-related questions to the students before stamping their ‘passports’.

But educating children alone will not be enough.

“This exhibition is very important as it teaches us how to deal with climate change. However, why does it draw so little interest from the public at large?” Rukdi lamented.

“It is easy to tell students to recycle their waste or plant trees at school, but what if they are told otherwise at home?” he said.

He believes that teachers must educate parents on environmental issues. “We usually invite parents to school to receive their child’s academic report, that will be the right time to tell them to recycle or plant trees,” Rukdi said.

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An estimated 400 million jatropha saplings and seedlings were planted across Indonesia in a biofuel drive between 2005-2008. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA , Apr 16 2012 (IPS)

Dreams of sending his children to quality schools have vanished for 40-year-old farmer Muslikin, as the father of three now struggles to repay the bank loan he took out to finance his jatropha plantation in 2006.

“Much as I would like to send my children to quality schools, I still have debts to pay,” said Muslikin, a resident of Gundi village, Godong district, Grobogan regency in Central Java, an hour’s flight east of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.

Back in 2006, when jatropha was being widely promoted by the agro-industry as one of the best options for future biodiesel production, Muslikin converted his two-hectare paddy field into a jatropha plantation and took out a bank loan worth about 3,000 dollars to buy saplings and fertiliser.

Less than two years later and before he was able to repay his debt in full, Muslikin cut down all of the trees and turned the land back into a paddy field.

“Jatropha was touted as a new road to economic prosperity, but it turned out to be a bust,” said Muslikin, adding that companies promised to buy jatropha fruits between 67-78 cents per kilogramme and to employ farmers with two or more hectares of jatropha plants.

To repay his outstanding loan of 1,889 dollars, Muslikin sells rice harvested from his plot, putting a strain on his household income. “I used to buy new clothes and shoes for my children twice a year and eat meat almost everyday. Now, I buy them new clothes and shoes once a year only and eat meat just on Saturdays and Sundays,” he said.

Failed national plan

Muslikin was one of tens of thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands, of farmers who heeded government appeals to plant jatropha curcas as Indonesia – an oil-producing country that has now become a net oil importer – sought to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, whose price has been rising steadily since 2005.

In 2006, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set an ambitious target of increasing renewable energy use to account for 17 percent of total national consumption and reducing fossil fuel use from its current 55 percent to around 20 percent by 2025.

The President established the National Biofuel Development Team tasked with formulating the country’s biofuel development blueprint and drafting biofuel production programmes to be carried out by related government institutions.

Yudhoyono also launched the Energy Self-Sustainable Village programme in 2007, a national campaign aimed at tapping local energy sources of biofuel and non-biofuel – geothermal, micro hydropower, solar, wind, and coal liquefaction – to meet energy needs of local households and small businesses.

These programmes sent farmers around the archipelago rushing to plant jatropha, a drought- and pest-resistant tree that produces seeds containing an average of 34.4 percent oil, one of the highest among biofuel crops.

“The number of farmers planting jatropha curcas is difficult to know, but we estimate that around 400 million jatropha saplings and seedlings were planted across the country from 2005-2008,” said Abbas Hadisunyoto, chairman of the Association of Indonesian Jatropha Curcas Farmers.

“In Lampung province alone (on Sumatera Island), farmers planted around 40 million jatropha saplings and seedlings among oil palm and rubber trees,” said Hadisunyoto, who once served as a member of the Lampung Provincial Legislative Council (DPRD).

Aside from Lampung, jatropha trees were widely planted in Central Java, West Java, East Java, West Nusa Tenggara, and East Nusa Tenggara provinces. Authorities say Indonesia has around 50 million hectares of “neglected” land that could be developed into jatropha plantations.

Sowing the seeds of crisis

Recently, the Dutch investment company Waterland International established a consortium called PT Waterland International Asia, a jatropha biofuel producer operating in Central Java, Sumatra, Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, and Sumba in East Nusa Tenggara.

Waterland’s operations, however, have come under the fire from activists with Friends of the Earth Netherlands, who allege that Waterland’s jatropha plantations on Java, particularly in Central Java, were exploiting local poor and uneducated farmers and compromising their food security.

“Jatropha cultivation on Java leads to the exploitation of farmers and comes at the cost of food production for the local population,” the non-governmental organisation said in a report entitled ‘Biokerosene: take-off in the wrong direction’ released in February.

Arief Zayin, co-author of the report, said the country’s biofuel campaign could trigger land and food crises as many farmers converted agricultural lands into jatropha plantations.

“Lands that were previously cultivated as agricultural lands are now planted with jatropha,” said Arief, who is also director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) Central Java.

Waterland called the report misleading and claimed it was written to justify the Friends of the Earth Netherlands’ fight against biofuel, particularly bio-jet fuel.

“What Friends of the Earth does not meantion is that we are not operating on agricultural lands but on government forest designated as reforestration areas where agricultural farming is limited or strictly bound by rules,” a company spokesperson told IPS.

It also said that its plantations were located on hilly lands and thus the jatropha trees have effectively prevented “soil erosion” and reduced “the risks of landslides.”

The company said that they pay 14 cents per kilogramme of jatropha fruits, including the seeds, husks, and fruit cells. “We use those waste by-products to produce biofertiliser,” the company said.

Farmers lose

Still, the jatropha rush proved to be short-lived. By late 2008, the biofuel campaign had lost its steam, with farmers cutting down their plants due to low selling prices of jatropha fruits.

“Between 80 to 85 percent of 400 million saplings and seedlings planted from 2005 to 2008 have been uprooted, not merely cut down,” said Hadisunyoto.

According to Al Hilal Hamdi, former chairman of the National Biofuel Development Team, the country’s jatropha-for-biofuel programme was practically non-existent.

“The programme has almost come to a complete halt, with activities limited to seed research and development, as well as small initiatives by some NGOs,” said Hamdi.

Hamdi said given the size of land that can be converted into jatropha plantation, the commodity promises huge potentials.

“However, the government has to help farmers with quality seedlings, price incentives, and production facilities,” he said, adding that it should also hire people who can teach farmers how to cultivate the plant properly.

Hadisunyoto said interest in Indonesia’s jatropha has returned, with some companies from Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea making inquiries with his organisation.

“We are discussing some cooperations with companies from those countries and now I am going around telling farmers to cultivate jatropha again,” Hadisunyoto said.

But Muslikin swears he will not give jatropha a second chance. “Jatropha is history for me. I am not stupid as a donkey that can fall into the same trap,” he said.

Irman Meilandi unhesitatingly attributes the return of birds, wildlife and the forests around his hilly village of Mandalamekar in West Java province to conservation advice streaming in over community radio.

“Thanks to Radio Ruyuk (meaning scrubland), the people of Mandalamekar have adopted a campaign to replant deforested areas and conserve forests around the village,” says Meilandi, referring to the yet to be licensed community radio station that specialises on environmental issues.

Broadcasting on FM 107.8 megahertz, Radio Ruyuk goes on air at 6 p.m. and signs off at 11 p.m. Its programmes discuss organic farming, herbal plants and medicines and village infrastructure, all in the local Sundanese dialect.

“Radio Ruyuk was designed to encourage local people to pay attention to the condition of the village’s forests and wildlife,” says Meilandi, co-founder of the Mitra Alam Munggaran (Nature’s First Partner) or MAM, a social movement concerned with shrinking water supply in Mandalamekar, a seven-hour drive from Jakarta.

Established in 2002 by a dozen local residents, the MAM movement started out by organising public discussions, distributing leaflets and putting up posters, urging people to protect the forests around the village.

While MAM was able to get local officials to ban the harvesting of rattan, hunting, and cutting down trees in protected forests, cooperation from local people was initially missing. Many were involved in tree felling and cultivation on lands designated as water-catchment areas.

Radio Ruyuk has been organising, on Sunday evenings, a live talk show from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on various environmental issues confronting the 718-hectare village. The hosts and participants are mostly farmers and small traders, working voluntarily.

The issues discussed include tree-planting activities, with MAM activists occasionally joining in to explain local policies or provide updates on the status of Indonesia’s forests.

Indonesia, one of the world’s most densely forested countries along with Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congro, saw extensive deforestation through the last century. Its estimated forest cover of 170 million hectares in 1900 was halved by the beginning of this century.

“The MAM programme aims to raise local people’s awareness and stimulate a sense of responsibility toward the environment,” says village chief Yana Noviadi. “We wanted more people to be aware of the dangers of deforestation and to participate in replanting.”

Radio Ruyuk, which hit the airwaves for the first time in October 2008, is run by the Mandalamekar Community Broadcasting Council, which manages the radio station with Meilandi serving as its secretary.

“In the beginning, Radio Ruyuk focused on environmental issues, the link between the shrinking of river waters and deforestation in the area and also local forest-related policies,” says Noviadi.

In 2008, a year after he was elected village chief, Noviadi declared forest conservation as one of his official programmes, further boosting people’s participation in tree-planting activities.

By 2011, Mandalamekar had replanted a total of 118 hectares of deforested area, including some 40 hectares located around water sources, and before long the volume of water flowing into the village’s rivers had increased.

“Paddy fields that once lay fallow are now irrigated and farmers grow paddy all year round,” says Meilandi, adding that Mandalamekar has 34 hectares of irrigated paddy fields.

“More importantly, stories of local residents picketing water irrigation structures or quarrelling over water resources are unheard off now,” Meilandi says.

Noviadi concurs with Meilandi, saying that he had heard stories of farmers setting up traps to discourage people trying to divert water. “While these are now told in a joking manner, they were disturbing,” Noviadi says.

Since 2008, local officials have made it a policy to ask every visitor to the village to plant trees in designated areas. “We want their support for our programme. The idea is to instill environment awareness among visitors so they can do the same in their villages,” Noviadi says.

By law, community radio is limited to a radius of two-and-a-half km, but Radio Ruyuk is received in six districts with a combined population of more than 10,000 people.

“A neighbouring district head once phoned in with a request for a talk on steps that can be taken at the grassroots level to conserve forests. When we asked where he was calling from, he replied that he was at a gathering of village heads in his district who were waiting to hear us over the radio,” Noviadi said.

Mandalamekar’s conservation efforts have not gone unnoticed. For two consecutive years, in 2009 and 2010, it won the prize for the best self-financed village forest management programme at the regional level. It was also runner-up at the provincial level in 2010.

“To the best of our knowledge, the regional government never made any assessment of our forest management, but I guess they listen to Radio Ruyuk,” Meilandi says.

Meilandi himself claimed the 2011 Seacology Prize for his efforts to preserve the environment and culture of Mandalamekar. “They told me that I was chosen from among candidates in 46 countries,” Meilandi says.

Seacology, a non-profit with headquarters in Berkeley, California, focuses on preserving island ecosystems and cultures around the world.

“Winning awards has never been our goal,” Meilandi said. “We take pride in the fact that we were able to replant deforested areas with our own resources, without external help,” he says.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO

(END)

Amid increasing reports of physical abuses resulting in deaths in youth detention and correctional centres across the country, an Indonesian state commission has embarked on a national campaign to scrap detention and imprisonment of children altogether.

“We are closely guarding the ‘juvenile justice system’ bill, which lawmakers are now deliberating, to ensure that it contains no article allowing detention and imprisonment of children,” said Apong Herlina, a member of the eight-year-old Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI).

If enacted, the bill currently under deliberation in Indonesia’s House of Representatives would replace the old law No. 3, a 1997 bill on juvenile justice that supports trial for children coming into contact with the law.

The new bill wants child suspects to instead be placed in special rehabilitation centres during interrogation, trial, and the post-verdict period, effectively scrapping detention and imprisonment for children. The bill also strongly encourages the plaintiffs and defendants to continuously seek out-of- court settlements, particularly for petty crimes.

“The bill shows major improvements from the current juvenile justice system, however, we have to be vigilant as conflicts of interests among political parties in the House remain strong,” Herlina cautioned.

KPAI, tasked with improving child protection in the world’s fourth most populated country, has demonstrated its vigilance by embarking on a national campaign against detention and imprisonment of children.

In late January, the commission organised a discussion on the pros and cons of incarceration for children in Jakarta. It is also now organising a national seminar on the juvenile justice system. Later this year, the commission plans to hold discussions and host dialogues with various groups around the country.

The commission, according to Herlina, wants rehabilitation centres to be placed under the ministry of national education, while the government and their political backers want the centres to remain under the ministry of justice and human rights.

“We want to ensure that child ‘detainees’ and ‘inmates’ have access to education, health services, and leisure,” Herlina told IPS, adding that even if the national education ministry became responsible for the centres, the ministries of health, social affairs, religious affairs, and justice and human rights should also be involved in helping to rehabilitate child offenders.

The issue of child detention and imprisonment has come under the spotlight recently following reports of deaths and abuses taking place in police custody and correctional centers.

Last December, for example, two sibling detainees, aged 14 and 17 years respectively, were found dead in a police detention centre in Sijunjung, West Sumatra.

Local police have insisted that the two committed suicide, while the children’s parents and relatives believe they were killed. Less than three weeks later, a 15-year-old boy died in the Tulungagung correctional centre in East Java on Jan. 13 after being assaulted by fellow inmates.

Meanwhile, a 16-year-old boy in SoE, East Nusa Tenggara province spent almost three months in detention for allegedly stealing flowers before judges from the local court acquitted him of all charges in mid January.

“Detention and correctional centres are not good places for children. In fact, some children are worse off after spending time in detention or imprisonment,” says Herlina.

Over 4,000 children between the ages of 12 and 18 years old underwent legal processes throughout 2011, with charges ranging from theft, drug abuse and mass brawls, to assault and rape.

“The number of children prosecuted has decreased from around 7,000 in 2009 and 2010, as we intensify our campaigns against the detention and imprisonment of children,” she added. Studies conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Indonesia in 2002/2003 and 2006/2007 respectively show that over 5,000 children are incarcerated every year in Indonesia, over 85 percent of who are placed alongside adult inmates due to a lack of prison facilities for children.

The researches also revealed that more than 90 percent of cases of children coming into contact with the justice system end up being imprisoned, two-thirds of whom receive sentences of more than one year.

“Both studies found that Indonesia still hadn’t met the global standards for treatment of children within the justice system,” UNICEF Indonesia told IPS.

UNICEF also calls on Indonesia to minimise the option of detention and prioritise alternative forms of response such as “community mediation, community service, education, and increasing support for families.”

“Over 70 percent of children who are imprisoned with adults are known to re-offend when released, and there is global evidence that children who are imprisoned are affected by a range of psychological conditions that can further impact on their eventual rehabilitation,” UNICEF claims.

Indonesia has set the criminal age of responsibility at 12 years old and suspects aged between 12 and 18 years old are expected to be tried under the 1997 juvenile justice law and the 2002 child protection laws.

Unfortunately, children accused of committing crimes here are still charged under the adult criminal code, thanks to prevailing ignorance among police investigators, prosecutors, and judges overseeing children’s issues.

“The two laws require investigators, prosecutors, and judges to be knowledgeable about children’s issues. However, most law enforcers have little knowledge about children, (prompting) them to charge children under the criminal code,” said Syamsul Ridwan, secretary general of the National Commission for Child Protection, known by its Indonesian name Komnas Anak.

Ridwan also suggests that legal confusion may have contributed to children being charged under the criminal code.

“The juvenile justice law uses the word ‘wicked’ to refer to children coming into contact with the law, while the child protection law uses the words ‘children with special needs’,” Ridwan said.

So far, only Bandung in West Java has established a special courtroom and detention room for children. Local law enforcers have also been trained together on children’s issues and judges there tend to be more lenient in court.

KPAI is also seeking to change the title of the bill from ‘juvenile justice system’ to ‘protection system for children who come into contact with the law’.

“Its current title is biased against children, while our proposed title puts the emphasis on protection rather than the criminal acts,” said Herlina.

She admits that efforts to abolish detention and imprisonment of children are facing an uphill battle, where the first, and perhaps biggest, challenge comes from the public at large.

“Indonesians tend to be (discipline-oriented), they want to punish whoever commits crimes, be they children or adults,” she said, citing a recent incident in East Jakarta where community members threatened to burn down a local police office if authorities did not jail a 13-year-old boy for allegedly raping a five-year-old girl.

“(Still), we are optimistic that the public at large will endorse our campaigns and put pressure on lawmakers to scrap detention and imprisonment of children,” Herlina concluded.