Environmental Autonomy, The Toothless Tiger

Another side-writing from my data collection in Toba Samosir Regency. I don’t mean to insult or shaming anyone, just letting the fact flows a little more to some of us who haven’t known. It’s not an academic writing, and I don’t bring any normative proof or academic analysis, so don’t rely on this for citation in arguing. I make this so you can feel, see from another perspective, and hoping the following elaboration will help anyone who wishes to sense how the system goes in Indonesia, and not oversimplifying things when they deal with anything related to reform in this country.

This time the trophy goes to the local environmental agency of Toba Samosir, whose official name is ‘Local Environmental and Mining Board’. And yes, the miraculous autonomous regime of Toba Samosir mixes the two conflicting bodies – the environmental guardian and destroyer, into one; leaving some chaos and confusion in its internal management. But let’s not talk about it yet.

I must say that the people in this agency is really nice, making me feel bad of writing not-so-good-things about them. They are responsive in picking up the phone, better than some national level government who never picks up the phone or respond to inquiries in proper time. It’s not difficult to make appointment with them and they seem to schedule it well. They let me sneak into EIAs, some company reports on their environmental performance, taking photos of permits, and so on – no suspicion that I might be using those data against them.

However, considering their responsibility and professionalism, I must say they did a bad, really bad job.

Let’s limit this conversation to Asahan River to begin, minimizing your chance to confuse before we dig deeper. The Law delegates many (I mean maaaany) responsibilities to local level government on environmental protection (including permitting, monitoring and enforcement) and environmental management (let’s not talk about this one – it needs a whole book!). One of those is to take care of the water pollution. The local government must study thoroughly what are the conditions needed to ensure a business operation that dump waste into the river will not endanger the river condition and the organism whose life depends on the river – including human. Then, the study result to certain rights, obligation, and prohibition set into the permit – in this case, liquid waste dumping permit. Amongst the study, we must consider the class of the river and its carrying capacity.

“And I’m so curious whast is the class of Asahan river? Its designation, also the water pollution carrying capacity, I can’t find them on Google” – I asked. That man I interviewed, one of the head divisions; said lightly “It has not been determined, Miss,” He continued, “To date, we only have three industries having the liquid waste permit,” Yes, three huge industries, you mean. So, all permits went on without assessment of how bad the river condition was and not taking into account recovery. And all designation continues without counting the possible endangerment inside the river water such as hazardous substances, you mean?

And then, after having issued the permit, local authority surely must be the responsible body to monitor such rights, obligation, and prohibition. The law sets some weird, differing, up to anyone mechanism on this monitoring system (not literally like that but you don’t want hearing me talking about this) and trust it to the local government. Most of the time, the local government trust it solely to the company and keep their hands off this responsibility.

“And how do you publish the data of the ambient water quality?” I asked. And that’s a stupid question because I should’ve begun with “Do you even do the ambient water quality test regularly?” or “Have you determined the exact location (coordinate, I mean) to take samples of the ambient water quality?” or “What is the regular interval you take sample of the water?”. And all the answer is they don’t even do it. Really. They did it once or twice or whatever without any clue of what the law says, and don’t really do something about it (like communicating it to the people).

And what about the effluent control? “Most of the time, we wait for the report from the community if some chaos, like dead fishes, occur,” Oh, and I haven’t mentioned that they haven’t had any complaint and reporting desk, so they usually ‘hear’ it from somewhere. Anyway, they want to make the reporting facilities, they say. Okay, we'll see.

“So how the provincial level governments make the environmental status report? It contains this information and I assume it comes in a bottom-up scheme,” I continued. “Sometimes they involve us in taking the data, but most of the time we will assist them upon request,” the official said. And ‘assist’ actually means top-down coordination from the higher level government.

So, up to this sentence, I will let you guess what this agency does about enforcement. And this is what surprises me the most.

“Yes, that’s actually one of our weaknesses. We don’t have anyone in the law enforcement desk,” he mentioned. Cannot believe what I heard, I asked “But have you ever give any sanction to any company of its violations? Like, during your time serving in this board?” And he mentioned one letter being sent recently to one of the liquid waste dumping permit holder to temporarily stop its operation. I don’t know if he actually confuse between enforcement and temporary stop, because actually the latter is a part of administrative sanction according to our law – while he mentioned no enforcement has ever been conducted. It has made me a bit grateful, but he suddenly added “But we don’t really know if they comply or not, we have not received any follow-up regarding this case,”

And that’s when I think I won’t need any further confirmation on the teeth of environmental law in this country.

“We don’t have the power to supervise and enforce beyond our authority,” I recall what Ministry of Environment Deputy on Law Enforcement told me. And I feel like wanting to write him, “This ‘beyond your authority’ cannot do nothing because they don’t even clear about their structure and work division; nor can reform it since they suffer for amazing rotation of its leader like 7 (seven) changes since 2001; lacking capacity or when they have it they don’t have the budget; they don’t even aware of what are their responsibilities according to the massive amount of regulations at national level,”

No money. No people. No clarity over duty. No leadership.

“And when they have some good people in their structure whom might expose risk to the capital owner, the higher power will kick them straight away,” – simple line that explains everything. One activist told me the story of the Head of that local environmental board who spent 6 months doing really great job, ensuring all obligations met no matter how big the companies are, and readily prepare sanction to non-compliance. And within those 6 months, he was mutated to non-job by the Regent.

I know it has been written in many reports, academic papers, policy brief, etc. But some stories might help people to understand and attached better to these challenges we’re facing, sometimes better than those reports can do. So, here is our challenge, dear brightest stars. We can change it if we want to, but it needs lots of sacrifice. It will question you whether you want to make your feet dirty by stepping into the mud. It will question whether you are strong enough to not be drowned by the mud. It will question you to be creative enough to create a beautiful result of that dirty mud.

And yes, we can start small by demanding.