Nature Alert: Letters: RI fails to protect tourism assets

Friday, 15 January 2010

Letters: RI fails to protect tourism assets

Fri, 01/15/2010 | Reader's Forum The Jakarta Post

I refer to an article titled “Review 2009: RI’s tourism potential remains untapped,” (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 4, p. 17). I think no amount of glitzy marketing of Indonesian attractions is going to built international tourism when the very attractions are being incrementally destroyed or, at the very least, mismanaged.

My experience throughout Indonesia is that, with a few notable exceptions, the combination of corruption and inept government agencies at all levels results in incremental destruction of the very attractions and experiences that could be the making of a great tourism industry.

Like any major asset, unless it is effectively protected and managed, it will degrade and disappear.

This is clearly evident in the national park system where illegal logging, encroachment and all manner of inappropriate, low-standard development is allowed and prevents the parks being the centerpieces of Indonesian tourism that they should be.

Some of the keys are likely be minimal direct government role in protection and management, involvement of independent (foreign) guidance, income generation flowing directly back to protection and management (instead of being siphoned off by all and sundry corrupt government officials), effective enforcement of protection (NGOs have proven effective in some cases, private enterprise always).

Better protection of Indonesia’s tourism assets is one of many good reasons to move the national park system out of the forestry ministry and its conflicts of interest into a separate semi-autonomous conservation agency with a board of management which includes independent people with international standing. Transparency and accountability would, of course, be essential.

With good protection and land management, law enforcement and a good measure of private and NGO partnership, they have the foundations of a great tourism industry. Add to that their great marketing campaigns and success is almost guaranteed. Indonesia could do the same or better, but the government has to learn its proper role — to support and facilitate, not try to run, control and parasitize its tourism assets and industry.

Government needs to learn from the successes in nature-based tourism, not just from Malaysia but also from the relative successes in Indonesia (e.g. Bunaken in Sulawesi; Rajah Empat in West Papua; Komodo).

Without fundamental changes in the protection and management of natural assets, Indonesia’s nature-based tourism has little future; no amount of marketing will change that.

Nairdah
Sydney

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/01/15/letters-ri-fails-protect-tourism-assets.html

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.