Interview: What on Earth does an environmental organisation actually do anyway?

Most people will never meet someone who works as a professional environmental activist. It’s no surprise then that the commonly held view is often skewed by outdated stereotypes. Are they really dirty hippies or tree hugging radicals? I’ve been traveling around the world talking to green workers to find out. Here’s a snippet of what Ian Singleton, director of conservation of Yayasan Ekosistem Lestari (YEL), gets up to.
1. What is YEL and how did it start?
YEL is an Indonesian NGO with the aim to promote more sustainable use of natural resources in northern Sumatra. One of its main focuses, however, is the Sumatran orangutan and its habitat, the tropical forests of North Sumatra and Aceh Provinces…
2. What programs are you running at the moment?
YEL runs a range of projects dealing the problem of illegal ‘pet’ Sumatran orangutans and how to rehabilitate and release them into the wild. It also runs a number of habitat protection and conservation projects, education and advocacy projects as well as undertaking research on the behaviour and ecology of the few remaining wild Sumaran organgutans.
Additionally, YEL is also active in promoting sustainable development, in particular agriculture – running a sort of model farm that is used by local farmers to develop new concepts and ideas and to test them before applying them on their own farms. It therefore functions both as useable farm and as an education and training centre.
YEL and PanEco also work to promote sustainable ‘ecotourism’ in the region. YEL manages its own ‘ecolodge’ in the town of Bukit Lawang, at the edge of the Gunungleuser National Park, and operates with other partners and elephant trekking programme, in which tourists can spend 3 days traveling through the forest on elephant back.
3. What do you think the biggest environmental problems are right now in Indonesia?
By far the most serious crisis is the wholesale conversion of rainforests to plantations. Illegal logging remains a problem, but if only selected trees are removed there is still a chance for forests to regenerate naturally, but if the forests are removed totally, as still regularly occurs to establish palm oil plantations or Acacia plantations to supply the paper and pulp industry, the forests and their wildlife are lost forever. This is also a concern when large scale mining operations are developed too, but by far the most forest loss is a direct result of the expansion of plantations.
Logging also has serious for climate change. Indonesia is the world’s third largest emitter of carbon dioxide, after the USA and China, despite not being considered an industrialised nation. Indonesia’s carbon emissions instead come from the destruction of the forests, which naturally store carbon in peat swamps. Peat is essentially organic matter stored over tens of thousands of years as it does not decompose in the water logged swamp conditions. Once the forests in these areas are cleared, all of the above ground carbon is lost to the atmosphere. Plantations then establish drainage canals, and dry out the upper layers of the peat, which then oxidises in the air and releases huge amounts of carbon. It then also subsides, meaning the drainage canals must be continuously deepened, until all the peat is eventually destroyed.
4. How do you think some of these problems can be solved?
Much hope has been pinned in recent years on the concept of REDD (United Nations Collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation). REDD aims to cut carbon emissions into the atmosphere by restricting deforestation and the destruction of peatlands. But it aims to do this by allowing developed countries can pay developing countries to preserve forest in exchange for carbon credits. The idea is to develop an ongoing alternative income for communities who would otherwise be reliant on logging and palm oil, while also funding a variety of conservation programs.
To YEL, the misuse and abuse of information by vested interests, often major plantation companies and local governments, coupled with the high levels of corruption still prevalent in the country mean that REDD is not the beacon of hope it could be.
5. Do you feel hopeful about the future? Why or why not?
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There are certainly reasons to be optimistic”.
In this age of technology and rapid advances in communication and data sharing, companies and governments are beginning to realise that they cannot carry on as before. Free flow of information is making it harder for companies to hide their destructive practices and infringements of the law.
YEL shares the same problem as many green NGOs around the world – “the lack of accountability and effective law enforcement.” Over 2800 individuals have been involved in illegally buying pet orangutans, yet not a single one has been prosecuted in Indonesia – with no legal ramifications in place, how is the species to survive? In Indonesia, there is a similar situation with major companies. Many of them are so large and so powerful, wielding considerable political influence both in Indonesia and abroad, and so skilled at hiding behind smaller, more visible companies, that they are virtually immune to prosecution.
Ian Singleton echoes the voices of many other Green workers I’ve met in his concluding comments – “Yes, there is reason for hope. But any improvements will be slow in materializing, and its by no means certain that orangutans, tigers, elephants, and even the tropical rainforests themselves as we know them today, will still be around when they do.”