Krystyna Krassowska, Environment Advisor of for Directorate for Environmental Affairs in BAPPENAS share her view and opinion on Strategic Asia, 16 April 2008.  

Summary of Presentation

Sustainable management of the environment and of natural resources provide the foundations for Indonesia’s long term national and regional development. This is especially because Indonesia’s development and economic growth remains largely dependent on land use and natural resources.

The challenge remains to build awareness and support amongst key policy makers and development planners, of the strategic development policy options which encourage, both through regulation and the market, sustainable extraction, production and consumption practices to support long term growth and poverty reduction.
As its economy matures, Indonesia faces a critical juncture in its development path. There is a growing recognition that environment and natural resource management is becoming its greatest development challenge. Maintaining growth to satisfy a growing population with will increasingly depend on institutionalising co-ordination of all sectors powering the economy towards sustainable extraction and land management practices. This will require, in effect, a restructuring of Indonesia’s economy over the longer term.
As part of the planning of the new Medium Term Development Plan (RPJMN) for the new presidential term starting 2010, Bappenas is taking the lead to kick start a systematic rethink of the what drives the Indonesian economy as a whole, to guide provision of enabling conditions to encourage business and consumers to adopt sustainable production and consumption practices. There are also many new opportunities on the horizon during next RPJMN period arising from sustainable natural resource and land management for CDM / REDD. The challenge for Indonesian government institutions and the private sector is to colelctively rethink the roles and responsibilities to take advantage of these to build both profits and human development.