Lim Mei Ming, Bandung
The natural disasters which have been continuously striking Indonesia should serve a warning that environmental sustainability is the basis of our life.
Floods, mud flows, landslides, forest fires and droughts can be prevented or at least anticipated.
There is an urgent need for Indonesia to take environment-friendly approaches into consideration in all its development programs to sustain natural assets, prevent material losses and bring people out of poverty and misery.
Many natural disasters in Indonesia have always involved human errors and environmental mismanagement.
Worsening floods in urban areas have a lot to do with rampant construction of shopping centers, villas, high-rise hotels and apartments.
The environment-friendly approach suggests that de-velopment projects will benefit surrounding communities, especially the poor and marginalized groups.
Construction of large dams have a bad record as being unfriendly to the environment.
It requires huge investment and affects much of the area surrounding the dam.
Building a dam in an agricultural area has often sparked social and political conflict.
In the case of the Jatigede dam project in Cimanuk River, it will inundate 29 villages across six prosperous districts, remove thousands of people, their homes, schools, places of worship and historical sites.
Already in the planning stage, the West Java administration has been taken to court by the villagers who want decent compensation for the losses they have had to suffer.
About seven years ago, the World Commission on Dams (WCD) found the trend of building large dams had declined.
The commission attributed this to the governments' growing awareness of the consequences to the ecosystems and local communities, as well as the fact that many of the predicted benefits did not come true.
After an extensive review of dams around the world, the WCD recommended that building large dams was the last resort.
With this in mind, the West Java administration should realize the negative impacts of the Jatigede dam project, which has been planned since 1963.
Proposed by the Ministry of Public Works, the project would involve construction of four dams to irrigate 100,000 hectares of rice fields along the north coast of West Java.
Green activists have argued there is a simpler way to supply water for irrigation.
They say water will continue to be available as long as the natural habitat of the water catchment area is kept intact.
The solution to a reduced water reserve due to deforestation would be to rehabilitate Cimanuk River and its vegetation.
The plan to build the Jatigede dam has been discussed for so long that much of the data to justify the project is already out of date now that conditions above and below the proposed dam site have changed.
Much of the agricultural land downstream has been converted into industrial estates that do not need irrigation water. In 1988, the World Bank stopped funding the research for the dam and canceled its plan to allocate US$37 million after doubts emerged around the feasibility study.
Recently the provincial administration revived the plan, citing the need to generate power.
Such purpose, however, will cost a lot more than alternative power generation systems, not to mention its impacts on the people and environment.
There is a mismatch between population density and sites where plentiful hydropower resources can be found (National Energy Market Analysis by Newject Inc., Task 102, 1992, rev. 1993, Newject Inc.).
In areas with a high potential for electricity generation, such as upland Kalimantan or Papua, the sparse population does not justify large-scale hydropower investments.
The potential hydropower resources in Java are relatively small - 4.5 GW - of which more than a half has already been developed.
Sedimentation in the Jatigede dam resulting from upstream deforestation will hinder the turbines from working at an estimated full capacity of 200 megawatts.
Forest destruction and degradation upstream has devastated the soil's capability to catch water.
Bare soil erodes easily and will be carried away downstream where sedimentation will quickly fill a large dam.
Satellite images over the last 40 years showed the 170,000-hectare Cimanuk watershed area has been progressively degraded.
The area was well forested in 1963 when planning for the Jatigede dam was started, but year by year its regime coefficient has run off to 250 from the standard of 50.
Today the river carries 8.5 million tons of sediment each year that would flow into the dam.
While the dam will be filled with sediment, river water laden with sand and mud will put the dam wall at risk. The progressively shallower dam and dirty waterflows will impede electricity production, leaving the dam unusable within as little as 20 years.
During the prolonged Jatigede planning phase, the world has moved to electricity generation alternatives which are more nature-friendly and cost efficient than large dams.
A much more efficient project with less risks would be the development of geothermal energyparticularly considering its high potential in West Java.
Dams contribute to global heating, as vegetation decomposition in the flooded area drastically increases methane emissions, a potential greenhouse gas.
The key to sustainable development in West Java and elsewhere in Indonesia is to consider all environmental and social impacts before deciding which development option to pursue.
As the World Commission on Dams recommended, we must consider all the electricity production and water provision options before deciding to build a large dam.
We should look for the most efficient and effective energy and water supply alternatives for the future, instead of creating further threats to nature.
The writer is a freelance journalist. She can be reached at mariamaei@yahoo.com
