Participants of several recent government-funded resource hunting expeditions to Indonesia’s remote areas have reported conditions of abject poverty, untapped potential for tourism and industry, and environmental tragedies.
Aat Suratin from the Mountain and Jungle Explorers Association said Thursday that participants of recent explorations had called on the government to pay closer attention to the country’s outlying islands, especially populated ones where conditions were backward.
“Some of those islands have neither electricity nor clean water, while other advanced areas can already generate [electricity] from the sun or waves… I am sure that we have many experts who can help them with that,” he said during an expo on the Indonesian Geography Expedition in Jakarta.
Aat also said the isolated islands were not connected with telephone lines.
Wanadri has since 2007 traveled to 92 of Indonesia’s outermost islands.
Among the poorest inhabited islands are Makalehi and Miangas in North Sulawesi, Bangkit island in Gorontalo, the Wetar islands in Maluku and Fani island in West Papua.
The Miangas Island hit the news last year after rumors abounded that the Philippines was hoping to claim it. Mingas is twice as close to the Philippines as it is to the nearest Indonesian island.
The inhabitants of Miangas Island are known to be more familiar with Philippine culture.
Wanadri is also involved in an ongoing exploratory project involving the National Coordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping and the Regional Representatives Council.
Agus Hermawan Atmadilaga, the agency’s head of surveys for land resources, said the expedition, called the Indonesia Geography Expedition, had been running since 2005 and had so far explored seven regions.
The regions include Northern Bali, the Pangandaran-Pangalengan area of West Java, and most recently, East Java.
Agus said the expedition had come face to face with several environmental tragedies, including the Lapindo mud flow, which continues to spew mud to this day.
“The most common [findings] are illegal logging, water pollution and pollutants flowing into rivers,” he said.
Agus cited an example of an area in North Sumatera called Langkat, where palm-oil forest conversion projects, some illegal, were destroying forests.
Edwin Hendrayana, the agency’s head of basic aerospace mapping, criticized the lack of facilities and the number of illegal activities in the country.
“At Djuanda airport [in Surabaya], for example, there’s a mosque just across from the end of the runway, which is a violation of a regulation on maximum [building] height issued by the Transportation Ministry,” he said.
The expeditions, which involve academics and local officials, last for about 10 days each, Agus said.
He said the purpose of the expeditions was to gather data on potential natural and human resources, and forward the data to regional governments.
Some regional authorities, Agus said, had failed to respond to input from the team, even those that had been directly involved in the expeditions.
Bambang Susilo, the Regional Representative Council’s head of committee II, said regional authorities often prioritized natural resources exploitation, including non-sustainable exploitation, above conservation.
He stressed the need for a law on national geospatial data that would create a single database as a reference for various institutions in the state, including the regional development body and the Forestry Ministry. “The draft [of the law] is ready,” Bambang said.
