Managing the Ecosystem Crisis

KOMPAS/IRMA TAMBUNAN

Farmers in Keluru village, Keliling Danau district, Kerinci regency, Jambi province, take a break by eating together at the rice fields, Sunday (10/02/2019). The tradition of working in mutual cooperation on the fields, known as a "share work", enables farmers to save on production costs. The tradition has rarely been applied in other areas.

Discussions about food, energy, natural resources, the environment, or infrastructure in the debates between the two presidential candidates, incumbent Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and challenger Prabowo Subianto, should be used as the basis of a review of the country’s development approach.

It is important because on the one hand, the five sectors that will be discussed are closely related to the real problems experienced by the wider community, and on the other hand, the problems are interrelated, and efforts to solve such problems need to find a balance between economic benefits, social welfare and environmental protection. In practice, this relies much on political decisions.

In the long journey of the economic development, the current situation puts the five sectors in the midst of the impacts of natural disasters, and there is still inequality in the control of natural resources, as well as the depletion of reliable food resources.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) recorded 20,041 natural disasters from 2009 to 2019. The number has continued to increase every year. Of the total disasters, 13,540 were floods, landslides, droughts and forest and land fires, which damaged 12,725 kilometers of road and 804,608 hectares of rice fields.

The latest UN Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) report also placed Indonesia as the country with the highest number of fatalities from natural disasters in 2018. Of the total 10,373 fatalities worldwide, 4,535 were in Indonesia (Kompas, 3/2/2019). This is a strong indication of the importance of shifting development strategies, in this case, by strengthening the implementation of ecosystem-based approaches that have experienced a crisis.

Ecosystem approach

The concept of an ecosystem-based approach leads us to recognize how much human life depends on the combined function of plants, animals, land, water and nutrients for food production and that ecosystems regulate the climate and water resources. This approach divides the benefits of the ecosystem into four categories.

First, it sees the ecosystem as a regulator of air quality, climate, water, erosion, waste, diseases, pests, pollination, and natural disasters. Second, as a provider of food, fiber, fuel and water. Third, it recognizes the ecosystem’s cultural and non-material importance, such as for education, spiritual value and recreation. Fourth, it acknowledges the indirect or long-term processes for the production of the three previous categories, such as land formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycles.

From an analysis of 88 reports from the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation (Kehati) from 2012 to 2017, it is known that 174 types of environmental goods and services are utilized. The availability of a variety of commodities makes it possible to meet short and long time needs. The availability of goods can be fulfilled from 157 types, mostly for short-term utilization. While 17 types meet long-term needs.

These conditions generally support economic independence because variations in the use of natural resources also allow for sustainable supply. It also needs to be noted that all of this is entwined with the socio-cultural aspects of a community and is not only based on commercial motivation.

A number of activities are entwined with the culture of a community, such as natural resource use management, the protection and conservation of natural resources and wildlife, knowledge of the benefits of medicinal plants,

handicrafts, marine tourism, mutual cooperation, local food consumption, fisheries, identification of seed quality and the process of reaching agreements.

If this ecosystem-based approach is used to integrate the development of the five sectors, it becomes possible to criticize the sector approach, which favors only the most superior commodities for humans, while ignoring other commodities, and that sees all commodities as independent and without any connection and dependence on one another. That assumption is still held as the basis for justifying the exploitation of natural resources, in which the calculation of risks is intentionally reduced because the four forms of ecosystem services above are ignored.

That is why the conversion of primary natural forests, for example into plantations, monoculture gardens or mines, is always considered more profitable, as it ignores the ecosystem values for the wider community.

Oil palm growers who maintain high conservation value forests (HCVF) in their concession areas are often accused of leaving their concession areas to become unproductive land. Therefore, from a review of the ecosystem-based approach, debating the development of the five sectors should not only look for the best answers to solve the problems of each sector, but also ways to transform development from a sectoral to ecosystem approach. The ecosystem approach to development has been stipulated in Law Number 32 of 2009 concerning the protection and management of the environment.

Politics of spatial planning

By ignoring the interdependence of all commodities in an ecosystem, partial management of energy, food, mining, plantations, or other natural materials has so far shown substantial errors in the consideration of trade-offs. Investment in the use of natural resources tends to sacrifice the supporting capacity of the environment on the one hand, and on the other hand, it becomes the cause of poverty. When associated with food, poverty is caused by decreased productivity or the loss of community farming land.

In West Sumatra, from 2011 to 2017, 45,487 hectares of farmland was converted into mining areas, 14,682 ha was converted for industry and 605,416 ha for plantations. In Bali, from 2015 to 2016, 400 ha of farmland was converted for settlements, rising to 1,000 ha from 2016 to 2017.

In Central Java, of the 884,933 ha of agricultural land recorded in 2015, about 7.28 ha was converted into industrial areas, 510.11 ha into settlements, 343.16 ha into open land, 178.18 ha into sand mines and 6.74 ha into ponds.

While in Wonogiri, in 2015, 10.1 ha of agricultural land was converted into industrial and mining areas and for social and public facilities. 7.38 ha was converted in 2016 and 12.3 ha in 2017. Likewise, the conversion of food producing land in Tasikmalaya reportedly caused problems for food security, degradation of the environment, landslides and a loss of natural beauty for tourism.

Farmland, which is very important for life and the balance of rural ecosystems, has increasingly become the target of commercial enterprises. Farmers generally do not have the protection to defend their land and must decide whether to sell their land or continue farming with increasingly insufficient results. This means spatial planning is still limited to the conceptual level in providing certainty of living space, but at the practical level, it cannot be used as a real tool of control.

The book The Scramble for Land Rights publication: Reducing Inequity between Communities and Companies by Laura Notess et al. (2018), details that with increasingly open competition for land tenure, large private businesses have been encouraged to enter the management area of rural communities.

The poor, even though their land has been the main source of their families’ livelihoods, have often been forced to give up their ancestral lands, as the productivity of the land declines, party due to the loss of agricultural water resources. At the same time, big companies that have strong political connections can quickly acquire and secure the same land rights. The question is, what is the political strategy to strengthen and protect farmers\' rights to

land, as well as to provide guarantees for agricultural water resources and economic infrastructure that enable farmers to earn decent profits? In this review, the performance of national spatial planning must be reflected by the certainty of living space at the local level. It also means that the issue of bureaucratic licensing and corruption of natural resource use are at the root of the issue of spatial violations.

In order for an ecosystem-based approach to be carried out, in addition to the need for sectoral development transformation strategies, political will is needed to minimize the occurrence of trade-offs, within the scope of this discussion, resulting in the loss of protection for farmers. That means innovation is needed to improve the functions and tasks of government institutions, which now generally have a mindset that is not supportive of the ecosystem-based.

Hariadi Kartodihardjo

Professor at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture