Indonesia Article

Environmental Problems in Indonesia

Indonesia witnesses huge environmental problems with a deteriorating natural environment in all aspects. There is no proper legislation focusing on the natural resources and environment of Indonesia. Though the legislation is enacted, it is not meticulously enforced during the 1980’s and 1990’s leading to environmental degradation problem.

The environmental problems in Indonesia became worse during 1997 when a serious financial crisis hit Asia, as a whole. The Indonesian Government tried to revive its local enterprises, ignoring the regulations of its Industrial behavior, which lead to firms pursuing cheaper yet environmental unfriendly ways of production and harvest techniques that added to the environmental problems.

In addition, the turbulent political conditions aggravated the environmental anomalies that made the protection of environment more complicated. The Government’s lack of clear local and regional authorities also contributed to producing weak regulatory organizations.

One of the biggest environmental problems in Indonesia is the accounts on sites of Indonesian forests being illegally logged. The root causes for this logging problem is the abundance of Timber and the relative poverty of most of the Indonesian people and the weakness of law enforcement. Logging affects the environment in many ways. Frequent landslides and floods are common disasters that result from unregulated logging and deforestation. One such landslide happened in November 2003 claimed the lives of at least one-hundred and fifty people.

Apart from these disasters, Illegal logging also leads to the very serious problem of air pollution in Indonesia. Illegal logging is done by the slash and burn method that intensifies the high levels of motor vehicles and Industry emissions, thus leading to air pollution and smog. This affects even the neighboring countries too. Deforestation also leads to industrial runoff that contaminates the water supply of the country.

Air pollution and water pollution are the biggest environmental problems that Indonesia is facing that not only affect its economy but also its people. It has a very severe impact on public health apart from imposing a cost on the economy which reaches about $400 million per year.

The fact that Indonesia possesses valuable and exceptional natural environment is undeniable. It is the abode of one of the biggest reef systems of the world and also biggest rain forests are there. These forests function as major ‘carbon sinks’ meaning that they naturally sequester world carbon releases and prevent climatic changes. The current environmental conditions of Indonesia should have to be improved by enforcing stricter environmental regulations by the legal system. This is a big challenge in front of the Indonesian government that has already taken the initial steps to recover and save its deteriorating environment.