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Indonesia presents a large array of examples of environmental problems traceable to poverty, ignorance, institutions and policies. Many of the examples of environmental degradation observable in Indonesia are consequences of several causes interacting together . Poverty, for example, plays some role in almost every instance. Let us however, group each problem under what appears to be the principal cause.

Poverty

Examples in this category include river pollution, the degradation of coral reefs in Bali, the extinction of the Java tiger, and especially tropical deforestation. Without doubt, shifting cultivation and “shifted cultivators” driven by poverty, is one of the leading causes of deforestation in a country initially blessed with abundant natural forests, second only to those of Brazil.

Consider river pollution. Some years ago, there was a case wherein a British company was discharging noxious , but non-toxic wastes into a river in a poverty-stricken region in West Java. There was strong local political pressure to either close the plant or to drastically curtail its discharges. Closing the plant would have cost over 150 jobs, in a country where growth in the age group 15-30 was far outstripping the number of jobs available. The Government made a decision not to close the plant. Why? To protect 150 jobs? No, because the river was already so polluted from other sources, such as human waste, runoff of heavy fertilizer use that closing the plant would have had no effect at all upon making the water usable for drinking or agriculture. Because of local poverty, the river was so polluted from human waste not those coming from artisan workshops. Sacrificing 150 jobs for zero ecological benefit would have been bad economics, bad ecology, and bad ethics as well. The solution to this environmental problem lay first in efforts to reduce poverty, not environmental policy per se .

Consider however, another river pollution case in West Java not settled by analysis. In 1984 a Japanese plant was discharging noxious waste into a river. Villagers protested: Government ignored. Villagers waited another year. Nothing. The villagers burned down the plant.

Coral reefs surround and protect a large part of Sanur beach on eastern Bali, Indonesia. The Island of Bali is very densely populated. Poor families have long harvested coral between the reef and the beach. The coral was used as a binding agent in making a particular form of durable cement. As a result of coral harvests, the reef was being slowly destroyed. As a result, erosion was threatening not only the beaches, coastal ecology, but thousands of jobs in tourism. What to do? Some foreign experts recommended construction of jetties to protect the threatened beaches from erosion. This does not work in Bali any more than it works on the east coast of the United States. Others advocated banning the harvest of coral. But this would have resulted in loss of livelihood affecting perhaps 4,000 people all poor. If coral gathering were banned, how would these people survive? Is a job in the tourist industry worth more than two or three jobs in coral gathering? This involves both and economic and ethical questions. And what if the degradation of the reef is now so advanced that it is too late to save it by prohibiting coral harvests? So this is also a difficult ecological question. There was no good solution to this poverty-induced problem.

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Source:  OpenStax, Economic development for the 21st century. OpenStax CNX. Jun 05, 2015 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11747/1.12
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