Why can we not rely on government to look after the environmental welfare of this nation?
Indonesia is suffocating under growing mountains of garbage. Faced with growing urban populations and the increasing use of plastic bottles, bags, aluminum cans and the like, the country is struggling to keep up with the alarming levels of mounting waste.
"If we wait for the government to provide everything - all the sanitation services - the government will wait for decades," says Yuyun Ismawati, director of Indonesian NGO BaliFokus.
The lack of adequate, safe and sustainable waste management is one of the most critical environmental challenges facing Indonesia. There is a lack of adequate municipal infrastructure, including proper sanitary landfills and recycling facilities.
This has led to pervasive environmental problems and health risks, especially for communities living close to open waste dumps and for poor urban settlements without organized waste management systems.
The traditional Indonesian practice of using palm leaves and other plants for storing and serving food allowed for easy disposal and composting of garbage. With the influx of plastics and other non-biodegradable products, Indonesia's waste management problems have worsened.
In Jakarta, authorities have been known to dump untreated garbage near fish farms, killing thousands of fish in ponds that local people depend upon for their livelihood. In Bandung, West Java, a 70-meter-high open garbage dump famously collapsed in 2005, tragically taking the lives of 147 people.
Less than half of Indonesia's solid waste is collected by government agencies, and it is poor communities that are most often completely ignored.
Yuyun Ismawati, who has just been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for islands and island nations, works with poor communities to counter this growing problem.
Her five-person team has coordinated 200 community organizations across six Indonesian provinces since 2003.
More than 600 communities have applied for her help in gaining local government support.
"We facilitate the process and ensure the money is transferred by the government," says Yuyun. "We provide them with the necessary training and show them informed choices of what's the most usable system in their neighborhoods."
Those choices have included community-run composting and recycling efforts. Yuyun has also helped develop solid-waste sanitation systems that rely on biological processes and gravity rather than electricity or chemicals.
Impressively, BaliFokus projects have reduced household waste by 50 percent in participating villages.
Among the success stories of BaliFokus is the city of Denpasar where one of Indonesia's worst slums has recently been transformed into one of the most visited neighborhoods on the island of Bali.
The NGO has been teaching residents how to make compost from their organic waste and to capture the methane for energy generation, using a process known as biogas digesters.
Yuyun's achievements have already been reported in The Jakarta Post, but I make no apology for this further salute.
This admirable 44-year-old was raised in a military family that traveled throughout eastern Indonesia during her childhood, exposing her to the violence that often erupted among the islands' various ethnic groups.
Yuyun became involved with the democracy movement while attending the Bandung Institute of Technology, one of the country's leading technology universities, where she gained her inspiration to tackle one of Indonesia's most pressing environmental problems.
She first developed her community-oriented approach to waste management as a volunteer with the Wisnu Foundation, a Balinese environmental organization that tackles problems besetting the island.
After becoming the group's executive director, she left in 2000 to found BaliFokus.
In addition to working with local communities, Yuyun has helped various tourism resorts reduce waste. Her "green tourism" model has been deployed in the Balinese towns of Ubud and Candi Dasa.
And if that's not enough, Yuyun has been involved in crafting Indonesia's first-ever bill on waste management and waste management strategy related to climate change issues
Yuyun is now expanding her areas of interest by establishing Indonesia's Toxics-Free Network. She intends to connect with more Indonesian NGOs and communities to work against the spread of toxic substances from burning wastes, pesticides, and heavy metals such as mercury.
Indonesia is all too dependent on the benevolence of its excellent network of NGOs, such as BaliFokus. Bad environmental practices not only damage nature, but also adversely impact on people's health.
It is high time that government takes these challenges more seriously.
Jonathan Wootliff is an independent sustainable development consultant specializing in the building of productive relationships between companies and NGOs. He can be contacted at jonathan@wootliff.com
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