Environmental movements need new directions

Environmental movements in Indonesia have touched every corner of the contemporary society particularly since the downfall of New Order government, more intensive than ever. Due the more democratic and open national polity, fellow activists enjoy substantial ‘freedom’ to raise such issues as rampant commercial logging, illegal logging and smuggling, forest fires, low recognition of indigenous rights, social conflicts, and forest conversion.
Numerous mailing lists have been created to discuss the problems. Various advertising and scientific materials for raising public awareness have been published as well. ‘Environmental stickers’ have been placed in canteens, students’ billboards, traffic lights and all possible free-spaces that one wonders whether anyone can count them. Even demonstrations and ‘street-actions’ have taken place across regions to protest poor environmental management. All are dedicated for the promotion of environmental stewardships.
While such efforts have substantially raised awareness among civil society on the magnitude of the problems, degradation of environmental qualities continues. The movements are yet to find a firm grip in that ecological values have not seriously been considered in the regulations yet. In fact, environmental issues are still not so salient on national agenda; the country’s environment-authorities continue to make environmental policy on their own sphere, beyond the reach of the activists.
Examples are well-documented. Still in the very early of the reform era, when NGOs were in the peak of euphoria, the state authorities passed barely its own draft for the new forest law. Even in these days, despite efforts against monoculture plantations, the government has on the other hand targeted massive plantations to nearly ten million hectares until the next five years. Also, notwithstanding the intensive campaign on moratorium logging, excessive exploitations continue on many parts of the country’s forests. And there are many others that one might not be able to identify every single one.
Apparently, environment-activists have not yet been successfully able to convince the policymakers to adopt on their policy, or in many instances fail to prevent the implementation of particular policy they work against. The problem lies on their apparent ineffective strategies.
Most of the efforts have been focused on pressing problems to be recognised -as a matter of urgency-, are more directed at civil society in general, not the government. Fellow activists might assume that the increasing awareness of civil society will put pressure on the decision makers to adopt/ implement certain forest policy. In fact, the ‘policy flavours’ of the decision makers might not necessarily reflect the needs and urgency within civil society as evidence clearly reveals.
Indeed, raising awareness among civil society on environmental and forest problems is quite important, and will still as ever since environment-related problems become increasingly diverse and complex. Nonetheless, while continuing such efforts, activists might need to diversify the strategy to also focus on the policymakers. Over years, activists have tended to blame the government poor policy in managing the environment. Rarely do they see the government institutions as partners to solve problems. This might have created persistent resistance and ignorance from the government.
Environmental activists clearly need to make compromises with governmental institutions. Avner de-Shalit (2001) in Environmental Politics also points out that ‘never accept compromises’ is the first of his ten commandments to fail in environmental campaign. So, it is not always correct to say ‘fight brings results’. It is also not to say that the activists rarely offer solutions, but they used to offer partial proposals focusing only on environmental goals, so that the decision makers were reluctant to adopt as they might have also preferred on economic outcomes.
Therefore, the activists should offer concrete proposals that conservation packages can go hand-in-hand with economic objectives. They are much more than just aware that sustainability has been defined as compromised notions of different interests.
It is essential for them to also switch their strategies into interest lobbies, pursuing more formal public policy procedures and mechanisms, such as hearings in the parliament. It is the time now for activists to do more political dialogues with regulation and decision makers. Environmental movements should now be more and more institutionalized. Diani and Donati (1999) in Environmental Movements: Local, National and Global similarly suggest environmental groups to draw legitimacy and respectability rather than the display of strong disruptive potential. They need not to always blame the government on environmental problems, but need to come and collaborate with them in order to discover ideal solutions for the problems.
Success stories are also there, particularly the more-economically advanced nations, such as Germany. The Green Party has in fact forged a strong coalition with the Social Democrat Party (SPD), which is clearly has different ideological foundation with more emphasis on business interests. By collaborating with SPD, the Green Party was able to attach its agendas in the national policy.
At this moment, efforts toward linking environmental activists and decision makers in the formal mechanisms are emerging in Indonesia. For example, business groups, the government and NGOs as well as have worked together to develop sustainable standards on forest management, regarding green certification. But they are apparently far from sufficient. Therefore, such efforts should be further enhanced. The success story of fellow activists in other countries should provide impetus for local NGOs to collaborate with the authorities to find more compromised solutions.
To sum up, many have placed high expectation on the environmental efforts to outrun the forest loss and degradation and to promote forest conservation and sustainable management. They will be disappointed to see the derailment of environmental objectives in the national forest policy only because inappropriate strategies. So, don’t let them down!