Vision Of A Green Indonesia
It was on late April, 2015, A Tropical Landscape Summit 2015 was organized in Jakarta. Having interested to participate in, I was asked to submit my answer of a mandatory question proposed by committee as a prerequisite to participate. The question is intriguing but never that easy to answer since it has to do with an effort of reconciling between economic progress and environmental protection. Here is the question:
“What is your vision of a Green Indonesia that maintains balance between economic and environmental commitment?”
At first I was rather sceptical with such reconciliation. With the help of Leopold’s notion of ethic I came up with this idea:
“Since the publication of ‘The Sand County Almanac’ in 1949 by an American scientist Aldo Leopold, the public’s perception of economic growth in America began to change. Not mainly because the growth had sacrificed the environment but much deeper than that, namely there was a lack of ethic in American economic policy. He began to widely provoke the importance of ethic into the state’s economic projection. Without the presence of ethic in economy, according to Leopold, instead of pursuing economic progress, it would render the regression and degradation of the environmental and susila state. He campaigned to public on the idea of conservation as an ethic in order to reach a balance between economic and the environment. For countless times economic stands up face to face with ethics. The name of Aldo Leopold attracted public attention but unfortunately his idea of ethic became classic and soon came to fade. People know Leopold, the conservationist, but forget his very idea.
Reflecting on that, I would like to figure out my vision on a Green Indonesia by invoking the concept of ethic in economy. Without repeating over and again the lack of ethical discourse in economy, I think it is best to go directly to the philosophical stance which is said that preserving ecological commitment as a part of the whole ethical commitments. Economy as a branch of social science is better off put to be a mean rather than an end in term of harmonizing the living world. But particularly in Indonesia today, the effort to stand with such a philosophical stance and using economic as it should be is not so easy except by coming back to our own values as human being living in a country named Indonesia. Regardless to the absolute concept of ethic in ‘western tradition’, I prefer to elaborate our own values extracted from the ideology of Pancasila, and then implementing it in the particular sense of economy as well as the environment.
It has been said that Pancasila if it could be compressed into one phrase, it would become ‘Gotong-royong’. Historically speaking, the concept of Gotong-royong was living for years in the heart of Indonesian people. Therefore it is very possible to regard it as one of our local wisdom, our own ethic. In my view, the good economic policies are always led to the preservation of ethic and value. Furthermore, in searching of balance between economic and the environment, the consideration of ethical value should be put inherently into the general vision of our national economic policy. We have to acknowledge the fact that our founding fathers had formulated the best economic policy in its time. In fact it has been saturated with ethical sense which can nurture the economic system to be more rationally reconciled with environmental commitment. So in order to achieve a green vision of Indonesia, ethical value living in our ideology Pancasila should be first revitalized.”
Due to limited number of words, I could not add one or more paragraph. But that found me in a surprise since it was selected as the top 50 best answers. In reward, I was welcome to take part in the summit and awarded a certificate. Thanks to Aldo Leopold 🙂
Stockholm, 30 November 2015
Sumber aciknadzirah.blogspot.com
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