Precisely a week after the end of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI) initiated a national seminar titled “From Rio to Riau: Sustainable Development Based on Green Economy, Social and Culture”.
The seminar, held in Pekanbaru in
cooperation with the Riau provincial government, resulted in the “Riau
Declaration”. The declaration is in the form of a contextual commitment
and action plan, because the Rio+20 produced did not touch the interests
of the poor and developing countries such as Indonesia.
Although
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deemed the conference, which involved
about 45,000 people and leaders from 190 countries, a success, many,
particularly environmentalists, considered it
a failure.
Kumi
Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace International, called the
53-page final report of the conference that was titled “The Future We
Want” as “the longest suicide note in history”.
Richard Dennis of the Australia Institute has even referred it as “Summit Cemetery”.
Developed
countries dominated the conference and shamelessly promoted the
interests of major corporations, rather than the interests of the people
of poor nations and the fate of planet Earth. They tend to privatize
the natural resources while spreading poverty of the people of
developing nations.
Whenever the developing countries proposed
for the provision of funds to support the pro-environment activities for
sustainable development, the developed countries pretended to hear
nothing. Apparently they do not want to be bound by commitments,
especially in relation to funding.
One must admit that
subsequent to the first Earth Summit, which was also initiated by the UN
back in 1992, concerns about environmental issues and poverty were
increasing and there were tangible results.
For example, Brazil
retained 78 percent of its tropical forests. The poverty rate in the
world decreased from 46 percent in 1992 to 27 percent this year. Life
expectancy rates surged by an average of 3.5 years.
However, one
cannot deny the fact that the world’s biodiversity has declined by 12
percent, 85 percent of marine fish stocks have been over-exploited and
740 million hectares of forest land have been cleared.
The Riau
Declaration specifically mentions the importance of wisdom and justice
in managing natural resources. Customary law, existence of communal
land, provisions regarding forest prohibition and local knowledge should
be the basis of development.
I remember a dissertation on legal
studies under the guidance of the late Prof. Satjipto Rahardjo that
found that one of the factors that caused environmental damage was the
neglect of customary law in various areas.
The cover story of Papuans in Kompas on July 1 titled “Earth is Mother” is one example.
I
also remember writing an article about the ecological balance,
referring to the maxim of Papua that says the forest is a mother. It
implies that destruction of forests in Papua is clearly not perpetrated
by the Papuans.
There is a similar occurrence in Riau. A
culturalist from Riau essentially suggested to maintain and preserve the
forests, we must ban the cutting of trees and have an obligation to
plant various plants.
In his paper, Ashaludin Jalil, the rector
of the University of Riau, wrote: “The harmony of traditional
communities’ lives and peaceful nature begin to be disturbed and torn
apart whenever the capital owners arrive. They exploit nature with no
courtesy or permission, and do not even care about the preservation of
the indigenous communities who possess the traditions of natural
resources conservation.”
Within the points included in the Riau
Declaration is a statement on the strategic role of scientists and
researchers in the development of Riau province and its abundant natural
resources.
When Rio+20 only briefly mentioned the efforts to
incorporate science into policy, the Riau Declaration explicitly
highlighted a commitment and an action plan through science and
technology with the active participation of the scientists, who mingle
with indigenous peoples, entrepreneurs and all stakeholders.
Scientists
and researchers from the public and private universities should not be
carried away by ambition to be included in the category of world-class
universities. Ambition is acceptable, but in my opinion, no less
important is how the universities can produce graduates who are capable
to manage the republic’s natural resources better.
Many studies must be carried out, but they should not stop at mere studies. The idea is “research for research’s sake”.
Each
study should be followed by the development and utilization in real
life. The campus scientists must counteract the allegations that R &
D in Indonesia does not mean Research & Development, but Rust &
Dust. There are even people who interpret it as Real & Dumb.
The
contextual research studies from different regions to obtain new
findings, new theories and knowledge derived from our own earth are
urgently required.
Fresh ideas that have sprung up such as
eco-socialism or commonism should be used as points for discussion and
review of input for policymakers at the central and regional levels, in
order to be implemented.
Hopefully the initiative that came from
Riau will evolve and resonate at the national and global scale, to
fine-tune the results of the Rio+20, whose report title is sometimes
twisted into “The Future We Don’t Want”.
The writer is a member of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI) and an author of the Riau Declaration.