Environmental Sustainability Challenge
Although nationally and globally the call for sustainable development is getting louder, to realize the prerequisites for such sustainable development is not easy.
"If there is no unity among us, forests and customary territories can disappear in the blink of an eye," says Apai Janggut, head of the Iban Dayak Indigenous Community in Sungai Utik, Kapuas Hulu, West Kalimantan.
From the choice of the "unity among us" phrase, it is evident from long experience that the efforts to defend forests and customary areas cannot be done alone.
Since 2008, with various challenges, Sungai Utik has become the first customary area to receive an ecolabel certificate. The certification from the Indonesian Ecolabelling Institute states that the area is managed with social capital to realize sustainable use of natural resources (SDA). It is proven that its beauty can be maintained to this day.
A decade after getting the certificate, in 2019, the customary area won the Kalpataru award and the Equator Prize from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). And in 2020, the area achieved legal ownership a 9,480-hectare customary forest from the Environment and Forestry Ministry.
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The Sungai Utik indigenous community is only one of hundreds of indigenous communities that are currently applying for legal ownership of their natural resources. This effort is usually accompanied by the hope of not being displaced by various forms of large-scale use of natural resources.
Although nationally and globally the call for sustainable development is getting louder, to realize the prerequisites for such sustainable development is not easy. The experience of Sungai Utik shows the importance of collective action consistently involving many parties. It is also a challenge if such small-scale sustainability develops into a large-scale one. It even needs to be realized on a global scale because the aggregate impact of environmental damage and pollution has no limits. A village area and the earth where it stands become a single entity that cannot be separated.
Only One Earth
At a press release in Nairobi, 18 November 2021, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) announced Only One Earth as the theme for this year's World Environment Day. This world celebration every 5 June this year marks 50 years since the day was established at the Stockholm Conference in Sweden in 1972. This year it is being held in Sweden again, with the same theme -- Only One Earth.
The report "Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies" by UNEP issued in early 2022 states that in the last 50 years, the global economy has grown almost fivefold, mostly due to tripled extraction of natural resources and energy. The world's population has more than doubled to 7.8 billion people. Even though the average prosperity has also doubled, about 1.3 billion people remain poor and about 700 million people are hungry.
In the course of these five decades, the earth's capacity to support the needs of nutritious food, water and sanitation continues to weaken, especially for those who are vulnerable and marginalized. Food security is threatened by the loss of pollinating insects and fertile soil. The loss of these insects has threatened annual global harvests worth between US$235 billion and $577 billion.
It is also stated that none of the agreed global goals for the protection of life on earth have been met. The preservation of natural functions in three-quarters of the land and two-thirds of the earth's oceans is now highly critical as a result of human behavior. At this point, one million of the world's estimated 8 million plant and animal species are under threat of extinction, and many of the ecosystem services essential to human well-being are being eroded.
The threat of extinction, according to a recent report by the World Conservation Agency (IUCN), is due to habitat loss caused by deforestation, agricultural expansion and urban development, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. Other threats include illegal hunting and unsustainable animal capture (Kompas, 24/5/2022).
This shows that the current development model has proven to have an impact; besides being unfair, it also encourages the decline in the function of natural resources and the environment. Therefore, the theme of Only One Earth, which is stated in principle by Apai Janggut, “unity among us”, can be interpreted as the importance of taking collective action to improve the development model.
Collective action issue
Conceptually, the problem of collective action occurs when the actions needed to benefit the public trigger a conflict between individual interests and public interests, and each individual has the opportunity to act in their own interests (Olson, 1971). In other words, there is a conflict of interest between the rational choice of the individual and what is in the public's best interest.
In this case, the rational choice of individuals can be in line with the public interest if individuals can personally benefit from collective action. In urban life, for example, the choice of transportation to work is a typical example.
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On the one hand, using your own car seems rational because it is more comfortable and faster. However, on the other hand, when many people choose to go to the office with their own car, air pollution and traffic jams interfere with everything. So, what seems reasonable from an individual's rational choice turns out to be irrational in terms of public needs.
However, we still employ planning methods that actually reinforce the individual's rational choice. For example, the calculation of nature services. The public needs in question, although often stated, have not yet been calculated and the figures have not been used in decision making. The UNEP report also emphasized that the global economic and financial system has failed to take into account the essential benefits that society derives from nature.
Most of nature's benefits -- such as the loss of insects that threaten global crop yields -- have no market value despite being the backbone of current and future prosperity. It has been proven that failure to calculate such things strengthens the rational choice of individuals, which weakens efforts to maintain the benefits of nature for the public.
Second: empathy for the victim. Everyone has felt the damage and pollution of the environment as well as natural disasters. Data on disaster victims in Indonesia by the National Disaster Management Agency, for example, has continued to increase in the last decade. During 2021, 7,630,692 people suffered and were displaced, 728 people died, 87 people were missing and 14,915 people were injured. However, as reported by UNEP (2021), people who are disproportionately poor and vulnerable suffer the most from such global disasters are also those who are generally economically weak and escape political calculations.
Third, the accountability of the financial institutions is still weak. Supposedly, it is not only those who issue permits that are responsible for damages made by the permit holders, but also the financial institutions that finance them.
To that end, the Financial Services Authority has prepared a Roadmap for Sustainable Finance Phase II (2021-2025) and also has a Green Taxonomy of Indonesia -- Edition 1.0, 2022. This policy is important to implement because even the “best” national banks still have a funding score in sustainable finance below 3 (out of a maximum of 10).
State leaders and state institutions are expected to be able to continuously realize such collective action.
Fourth, the issue related to political pressure. So far, there are no environmental impact analysis studies (AMDAL) that can stop a bad project. Around the world, it can be seen from the growing catalogue of cases that AMDAL gives the green light for developments that should not be carried out. The reasons for this are conflicts of interest and “legitimate compromises” (Laurance and Salt, 2018).
In many countries, governments require project initiators to fund AMDAL studies. In practice, experts who conduct studies in a professional and rigorous manner may be blacklisted by other project initiators in the future. This view is exacerbated by the fact that people's views that support or reject expert opinion can be based on the mobility of political interests and not on the reality they face -- a reality that is beyond the standard repertoire of a profession's work.
The description shows that the rational freedom of uncontrolled individuals, or political pressure in a social environment, causes collective action in the public interest to become a big challenge. In this case, coercion through law enforcement is often not enough. More effort is needed.
What many people have done for Sungai Utik goes beyond legal obligations as a basis for action. "Unity among us" to realize collective action is proven to work if in the process it is able to foster a sense of mutual trust, improve reputation and create positive reciprocal relations between parties. On a national and global scale, state leaders and state institutions are expected to be able to continuously realize such collective action.
Hariadi Kartodihardjo
Hariadi Kartodihardjo, Professor of Forestry Policy, Faculty of Forestry and Environment, IPB University
This article was translated by Kurniawan Siswo
