How should Indonesia treat its biodiversity?
Indonesians take great pride in the biodiversity stretches across their archipelagic nation. Whilst land area is only 1.3% of the world’s mass, Indonesia’s biodiversity represents at least 8% of the world’s seed plant and 10% of the world’s bird species.
Nonetheless, does the abundance of species spread along the country determine Indonesia’s absolute ownership of them? Does it give us unlimited rights to decide what to do with our biodiversity just because we share our common living space with them?
Since Indonesia become an independent country, claim over natural resource management has been maintained within its jurisdiction. The 1945 Constitution clearly stated by Article 33 paragraph 3 that “The land and water and the natural resources contained therein are controlled by the state and used for the greatest prosperity of the people.”
After a long history of Dutch, British, and Japanese colonialism, it is not surprising that Indonesia wants to manage the biodiversity independently to uphold the nation’s identity, sovereignty, and dignity.
This sense of ownership, however, becomes problematic when it turned out to be exploitative and consumptive in nature. As such, biodiversity conservation efforts tend to be based on the potential economic benefit and income of the species in question.
The policy for fisheries, for instance, turned exploitative once former Minister Susi Pudjiastuti left her post. The management of marine biological resources is currently treated the way mining substances were extracted.
Conservation tends to be viewed as shielding areas; limiting its accessibility and determining those with authority to exploit, and those prohibited from doing so. Such policy has prompted debate over the prospect of patenting Indonesian species to prevent their use from foreign countries. Similarly debated is whether research must be conducted with the state’s own funds, preventing biopiracy, sample theft, and other forms of foreign misuse.
But clearly missing from these debates was our gap in understanding and exploring our biological resources and the concrete steps to patch the gap.
If we view our relationship with nature from the natural history point of view, however, we shall see that almost all animals and plants appeared before us. The modern humans (Homo sapiens) merely decided over an administrative area of a country — if the discovery doctrine is about to apply by considering all species, humans definitely lose in the trial. A view through the lens of natural history can help us admit our biodiversity as a legacy instead of ownership.
Who came first?
Indonesian islands have complex geological history. Some landmasses are significantly old, some relatively young.
The land that now forms what we know as Sumatra and Kalimantan dated back to 60 million years. To the east, the Indonesian islands have a more complex history. Not all parts of the land that we know today as Sulawesi appeared at the same time. There are parts that have been around for 60 million years and there are parts that only appeared millions of years ago. An interesting story about this geological history is available for further exploit in the Indonesian Biodiversity book published by the Indonesian Science Association, ALMI and AIPI.
Early hominins (Homo erectus) at least traced the islands of Indonesia 1 million years ago. However, the first modern humans (Homo sapiens) had only recently inhabited the Archipelago on a scale of tens of thousands of years ago. This was much later than the age of the youngest ancient orangutan fossils, which were less than 100,000 years old from various locations in Southeast Asia.
Orangutans began to have a different evolutionary history from their common ancestor with great apes 10 million years ago, while their common ancestor with humans and chimpanzees started 5 million years ago.
Interesting to note how most of the animal and plant species are present in the Archipelago before humans. Apart from orangutans, which diverged from a common ancestor to great apes about ten million years ago and apparently roamed across Asian plains before finally being found only in Indonesia, other animal species also share a more or less similar natural history. Komodo dragons, for example, were quite common in Australia less than 3 million years ago before eventually traced to the Flores Island plains at least less than 900,000 years ago and nowadays can only be found in East Nusa Tenggara.
Many of the species that are often said to be of “native” Indonesia have families or ancestral distributions outside Indonesia. Apart from orangutans and the dragons, rhinos and tigers have families in the plains of Asia and Africa. Not only did they arrive first, but these species also were not even that unique to Indonesia. If thousands of species in Indonesia are studied closer within the purveyor of evolutionary history, one will likely find a more complete picture of what we once had (or had not).
Of course, the debate could veer into the percentage of kinship between these species to highlight the point where we associate them to the ‘nativity’ of Indonesian species. However, it is as meaningless to argue which Indonesian humans are “indigenous”, as it is to argue which native Indonesian species can be patented — all are simply absurd.
Has one ever checked with the Javan tiger, the Sumatran rhino, and the Bornean orangutan if they’re indeed willing to be the endemic animals of Indonesia? What about coral polyps floating the oceans or the migratory birds? If one can communicate with them, will they opt for an Indonesian identity or seek to change nationalities and prefer asylum in another country?
In the geological age scale of the Archipelago, modern human species have only recently emerged compared to the other species. However, at one point in time, humans created the concept of state and territory, causing us to limit each other’s region based on ethnicity, and in the early 20th century these tribes decided to join the Republic of Indonesia.
Conservation Legacy
Our biodiversity is thus a responsibility, instead of something to claim ownership. We are amenable to what happens to their existence and welfare.
Reality though, cannot be further from this ideal. Whilst we never obtained these species with our labor, we exploited them as if they were. They are treated as commodities whose mobility is determined by a pile of legislation and signatures. They are valued as no more than a product and were exploited as such, simply because we believe they belong to us. All because we happened to be born and live in the same geographical location to these species.
Viewing our natural resources as a responsibility to be managed sustainably instead of the property with which we have unlimited rights requires a major change of mindset; that species all over the world belong to all. Human authorities who happen to shelter these species’ habitats are responsible for sustaining them and their habitats to keep them surviving in the future.
Viewing our biodiversity with this shift in mindset, as a trust and a legacy, however, would make sustainable development an easier objective to achieve.
