Land Use Change and All Indonesian's Typical Bullshits

Corruption should inevitably be said as the primary driver of the sustainable deterioration of this archipelagic state. The revoke of protected forest in Bintan island for building the local government office complex is a common blemish in Indonesia and doesn't necessarily link to corruption conduct. But not for Al Amin, member of the Indonesian parliament, whose been caught in the act by the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) upon receiving graft at a stars hotel in Jakarta. He's accused of receiving graft for smoothing conversion of protected forest in Bintan for the development of the local government office. So what?

Several journalists called me and requested for phone interview and asked my opinion. A usual first response I gave, "Opinion on what?" It's a typical journalist question which isn't a question whatsoever. They didn't come up with stronger backgrounder and assumed that I share interest with other resources. Some of them need for some time to rearticulate the question as I clearly said, "I read that news, and have no comment since I consider that as common blemishes here in our country." I have to explain that they should interview resources from the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) or Transparency International (TI) or Masyarakat Transparansi Indonesia (MTI) regarding the case. Until then finally they successfully built a better question, "Okay, could we have your opinion on conversion of protected forests in Indonesia, from your organisation perspective?"

Forest conversion or forest land use change is the top policy lies in this country. If you open the map of Indonesia with good segregation of layers based on land or spatial uses, you'll find pretty good portion of wide variety of areas designation, including the protected forest. According to the law, the protected forest is aimed at protecting integrity of the surrounding ecosystem and (hopefully aimed at) securing safety of the people. As a printed product, that map is pretty good for developing a proposal submitted to some bilateral and multilateral development assistance agencies for a what-so-called sustainable environmental projects. It has nothing to do with safety of the people (though it's always mentioned as one of key primary objectives in the proposal). But, in reality, the nice coloured layer on the map of the protected forest doesn't mean anything to the government but spare lands for any kind of new development.

It is not the community declaring the protected forest officially, unless those under customary laws that always been revoked by the State's law. And it is not the community that has power to convert land use of the protected forest. The government is the one who holds power to do that. One stupid question is, "If the government would anyway convert the land use of a protected forest, why did they set up the area as a protected forest?"

This morning a journalist called me and confirmed a research group from known university in Bogor, assigned by the Forestry Minister, just came up with conclusion that the protected forest in Bintan is eligible to convert, as the extent and diversity of natural mangrove ecosystems had long been destroyed, and the local community had also long been utilising the areas for years. My goodness. The most stupid morning ever in my life.... What kind of research is that? I thought research would always come up with more open, optional in nature and conditional answers, not with fabricated set of fixed answers. If the area had long been fucked up, would it only have one answer: Land use change? How about other possible answers like, "rehabilitation"? Or, "area management improvement"?

Friends, I have no intention disrupting your appetite for breakfast this morning. But I really have pretty bad Saturday morning at the moment...