Future of Environment

This has been a long never-ending issues that is brought by the so called ‘environmentalists’ from developed countries, mainly European NGOs. They are the enlightened. They protect trees and animals from extinction, ensuring sustained biodiversity, trying to educate the world on how important it is to preserve the forests to ensure the survival of mankind.

But one thing that they forgot is, they start caring for the environment, when they have plenty of food on the table, a shiny car to drive, all under the shades of their well equipped, large mansions at the expense of their forests. So after all the damaged they had done, only now they started to realize that they need oxygen to breath? Or ozone layers to ensure that they are not fried? They started replanting, yes but the damage they had done took hundreds of years to recover. And now, they have the cheek to even ask the developing countries to maintain their forests! To ensure that they have the oxygen to enjoy the luxury that they had reaped.

I raised both hands in support for Indonesia. According to Mongabay.com [Full article here] :

Indonesia may soon join the Coalition of Rainforest Nations in seeking compensation for rainforest conservation, according to a report from the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), a timber industry group.

This is only logical. Land, capital, natural resources and labour are the 4 keys to economy.Indonesia have in abundance of land and labour, yet they can’t yield their land for economic growth, which resulted a poor return for their people as labour can’t be maximized! They will live in poor and hardships to protect the environment, while providing oxygen for everybody else in this world to continue enjoying their delicious meal, in their big mansions. Compensation program such as this is seen as not really a fair deal, but acceptable in ensuring that the government can still support the people without destroying the rainforests. A thorough analysis of opportunity costs should be made in which how much do the participating countries can make if they yielded their land and should ask the same amount from the remaining countries of the world, especially rich, developed countries.

Indonesia is just one example. They are other countries like Brazil, Malaysia that is constantly under the NGOs attacks for yielding their own land, for their people. In Malaysia’s case, palm oil plantation, which gives them approximately US15 billion for the country with 60,000 job opportunities, is under attack for deforestation and orangutan extinction. How can this be logical as they still retain 64% of their country under forest covers? Only 4% of their land is being planted by oil palm. On top of that, they have one of the best sustainability practice for their plantations – biological control instead of poisons, zero burning policy, minimal use of chemical fertilizer, ban on paraquat, protection of the local native and their heritage and many more.

I believe these environmental NGOs has different agendas. I’ll try to put more stuff in my next article.