An alliance of around 100 activist groups is set to hold a debate with the three presidential candidates to dig deeper into their environmental and human rights agendas after the national polls body dropped these issues from the official debate topics.
“We want to hear candidates respond to questions about public issues including the environment and human rights, and outline their main programs in these areas,” a member of the organizing committee for the alliance, Berry Furgon, said Wednesday.
The debate is expected to be held at the national library later this month.
Berry, also executive director of the Indonesian Forum on the Environment (Walhi) said one of the issues to be raised in the debate was the candidates’ stance on the Lapindo disaster.
“For us, the Lapindo case will be the indicator for whether the government is serious or not about resolving environmental, social and political issues, as the case is politically relevant,” he said.
Director of Indonesia Hijau, Chalid Muhammad, said the elected government should prioritize tackling environmental problems because millions of people, particularly those living in coastal areas and farmers, will face the negative impacts of climate change and natural disasters in the future.
“We want the next government to take concrete action rather than simply promises to create policies or join international agreements on environmental issues,” he said.
“Indonesia has signed a great deal of international agreements regarding the environment and climate change, but enacting policies remains a weak point in the end,” he said.
According to Chalid, a crucial problem facing the government is how it plans to set aside the necessary 40 million hectares of idle land required to assist with alleviating poverty.
The national representative of Greenpeace Indonesia, Nur Hidayati, said the presidential debates would also focus on the candidates’ approach toward dealing with forest issues.
“Too often does the government take measures that do not reduce the problem,” she said.
She said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had promised to cut greenhouse emissions from the forestry sector by about 50 percent in 2009.
“But in reality, the ministry of agriculture issued a decree allowing the conversion of peat land,”
she said.
Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest forest area, has experienced the rapid destruction of its rainforest areas which has led to a series of natural disasters in the country.
The Guinness World Records said Indonesia’s rate of deforestation is the highest in the world, with the equivalent of three soccer fields cleared every hour.
Around 1.8 million hectares of rainforest was cut down in 1997, with figures jumping to 2.8 million hectares per year between 1998 and 2000. Since then, clearance rates have remained high, albeit stable, at 1.8 million hectares. Indonesia is world renowned for its biodiversity, with nearly 3,700 species, or 15 percent of the world total, of fauna living within the archipelago.
Many, however, are on the brink of extinction.
The government has long been under pressure to fix the environmental situation in Indonesia, which has caused recurring natural disasters from floods to landslides and air and water pollution across the nation.
An environmental report in 2008 revealed that the quality of air, water, rivers and waste management nationwide had continued to worsen due to poor law enforcement.
The report said that most of the country’s river water, the main source of drinking water, had long been badly contaminated, mainly by households and industries.
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