W

ith ambitious growth targets being set for several years into the future, Indonesia must implement a comprehensive strategy to maintain environmental sustainability and avoid ecological disaster, green groups have said.

Although Indonesia has enjoyed steady economic growth in the past decade, which is expected to continue, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia CEO Efransjah said that the country'€™s limited natural resources should make the government consider maintaining '€œbalanced growth'€ instead of sustainable development.

'€œIndonesia has a very ambitious target to increase its income per capita from US$3,000 in 2010 to between $44,500 and $49,000 by 2045. However, no sustainable growth [can be achieved] with finite resources,'€ Efransjah said.

The government'€™s preference to use quantitative indices, particularly gross domestic product (GDP), to measure development, according to Efransjah, had made the public relatively unaware of the impact
of economic growth on the environment.

'€œBy using other indices, like ecological footprint and biocapacity, we know whether we have reached our ecological limit,'€ he said.

The ecological footprint refers to the comparison between humanity'€™s consumption and the Earth'€™s regenerative capacity, or biocapacity, by calculating the area required to produce the resources people consume, the area occupied by infrastructure and the area of forest required for sequestering carbon dioxide not absorbed by the ocean.

The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Agency (BP REDD+) chairman, Heru Prasetyo concurred with Efransjah, saying many environmental challenges, including forest fires and unsustainable palm oil production, had created challenges for the country'€™s economic development.

To address the problems, Heru proposed the government involve stakeholders in the community.

'€œWe'€™ve been talking to palm oil producers, who are now considering the idea of a zero deforestation supply chain. Some big companies are doing that and we are moving to [persuade] others as well,'€
Heru said.

Last month, the WWF released its '€œLiving Planet Report 2014'€, in which it presented numerous gloomy pictures about the state of the Earth, enough to make WWF International director-general Marco Lambertini call the report '€œheartbreaking'€.

The report suggests that the world'€™s population currently needs the regenerative capacity of 1.5 Earths to provide the ecological goods and services currently used every year.

'€œThis '€˜overshoot'€™ is possible because '€” for now '€” we can cut trees faster than they mature, harvest more fish than the oceans can replenish, or emit more carbon into the atmosphere than the forests and oceans can absorb,'€ the report says.

In 2010, the Earth'€™s biocapacity was approximately 12 billion global hectares (gha) '€” which amounts to about 1.7 gha for every person on the planet. Ten countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China, accounted for more than 60 percent of the Earth'€™s total biocapacity.

Paramadina University rector Anies Baswedan, who is also a deputy on president-elect Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s transition team, acknowledged the massive environmental problems faced by the country.

Anies said Jokowi, who will be inaugurated on Oct. 20, and his government would rely on strict law enforcement to tackle the country'€™s problems, including those related to the environment

'€œThis time we are not going to allow those violating our law to go unpunished,'€ he said.