CONSERVATION IS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

This is responding to Jean-Michel Severino and Peter Seligmann’s opinion “Conservation with a Human Face” (Jakarta Post, August 8, 2008). In it the authors argue that conservation-based development projects, in this case the 9 million hectares of new protected areas created with the help of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), prove that economic growth and environmental protection are not incompatible.
Several issues regarding the notion of compatibility between the economy and environmental protection or conservation need to be highlighted. What’s wrong with the economy that it usually is not compatible with conservation agenda? And what’s wrong with environmental protection or conservation that so often it hinders economic growth?

The ultimate argument is that the drastic decline of the world’s natural capital, the unprecedented pace of species extinction, the destruction of forest and coral reef, and eventually climate change are the direct result of the wrong economy. To put it bluntly, as a plesetan (wordplay) of a phrase in American politics widely used during Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush, “It’s the wrong economy, stupid!”.

Fossil fuel economy is the wrong economy. For a century now the growth of the world’s economy is fuelled by fossil fuel, literally taking out into the air billions of tons of carbon deposited through million years of biological and geological processes. Growth-oriented economy is the wrong economy. It’s behind previously developed and currently developing countries’ rush to development by capitalizing on natural resources. Even these sources of life, forest-ocean-water-mineral, is now called “natural capital”. Market and capital-accumulation economy is the wrong economy. It pushes aside social and environmental concerns. On this the almost biblical Stern Review (2007) even concluded that “climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen”. Yes indeed, these wrong economies are incompatible with environmental protection.

What is the right economy then?

The right economy is the one that also means conservation. The definition of conservation is the protection, improvement and wise use of natural resources to provide the greatest social and economic value for the present and future. Furthermore, conservation implies active management of human-nature interactions, as compared to “preservation,” which usually involves setting aside scenic or fragile areas to minimize human impact or for amenity or existence values (Carol D. Saunders in Human Ecology Review, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2003). It happens too often: conservation turns into wrong conservation, when environmental groups or government agencies narrow it down into just protection and preservation of certain species or ecosystem. That’s when conservation collides with economic development. In the case of Indonesia, the national parks system, marine protected areas, and protected forests are examples of wrong conservation. Protected areas are almost always the least economically developed area. Managing a conservation area almost always involves marginalizing local indigenous people, evicting them from their ancestral lands, and denying people’s access to their forests or seas.

Therefore, there is no need to converge economic development and conservation priorities as advocated by Messrs. Severino and Seligmann in their article. The right economic development and the right conservation are one and the same thing. The right economic development is actually conservation, and conservation means economic development.

At a micro level Indonesia has actually many models of this “right economy/conservation”. Take the case of South Konaweha in Southeast Sulawesi where thousands of illegal loggers have transformed themselves and operate a successful FSC certified community logging. Here, community logging is defined as community-based and sustainable timber, non-timber, and ecological services forestry. They are now enjoying prosperity and healthy forest. Another example is in Bali where hundreds of fishers from several villages have stop destructive fishing and coral mining, and joined arms to become currently the first and only exclusively non-cyanide ornamental fish and cultured corals exporters in Indonesia. They are now enjoying better income and healthier coastal ecosystem. All these economic development/conservation requires that forests and seas be protected, the integrity of natural resources and ecosystems be improved, and local community and indigenous people use the natural resources wisely, producing greatest social and economic return for the community and for their future generation.
These are indeed examples of “economy/conservation” the world needs to address poverty and environmental destruction.