From the Past to the Future

The Jakarta Post, WEEKENDER | Fri, 01/22/2010 4:02 PM |Profile

A professor of geology and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Jared Diamond is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, a scientific analysis of the history of civilization. His other, perhaps more important message is to never forget the lessons of history. Hana Miller interviews him.

“I have often asked myself,” Jared Diamond writes in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?”

At a time when the future of the planet and the life it supports has come to the forefront of popular media, Diamond’s message about learning from the mistakes and the choices of past civilizations in his recent Collapse becomes especially pertinent. Referring to the analytical model he uses to examine various different societies and how they adapted to – or ignored – the actualities of their circumstances, Diamond shares with us his thoughts on the factors that put Indonesia’s future most at risk, raising critical points about the direction in which we are knowingly leading ourselves.

Globalization

In my book Collapse, I discuss the successes and failures of past societies at solving their environmental problems – such as the successes of the Japanese, New Guinea highlanders and Tikopia islanders, and the failures of the Polynesians on Easter Island in the Southeast Pacific, the Mayans of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, and the Anasazi Indians of the Southwest United States.

In the past, when societies on different continents around the world were largely isolated from each other, the success or failure of one society didn’t affect distant societies. For example, it had no effect whatsoever on Indonesia when the Easter Island society collapsed, or when the Mayan cities collapsed. It also had no effect on Indonesia when Japan in the 1700s solved its forestry problems sustainably.

Today, however, in our globalized world, anything that any country does has the potential to affect any other country. For example, with global warming, greenhouse gases emitted in the United States or China or Russia contribute to global warming that affects Indonesian reefs. Globalization also means that Japan, a populous rich country that’s very good at protecting its own forests, succeeds in doing so by destroying the forests of other countries, such as Indonesia.

International business and the environment

Among the most important relationships for Indonesia are those involving Southeast Asian and worldwide businesses that import raw materials from Indonesia, especially tree products (timber and paper materials), fish and other sea products, oil and minerals.

My impression is that some of these international businesses operate in Indonesia according to standards that are not up to the highest international ones. For instance, much is known about how to manage forests sustainably to extract wood and wood products at a rate no higher than the rate at which new trees grow. Thus the forest can be exploited for the indefinite future. Japan and Germany are examples of densely inhabited countries that have been managing their forests sustainably for around 400 years. Even after centuries of exploitation, visitors to Japan and Germany are stunned to see how large a fraction of the area of those countries is still covered by forests: about 76 percent in the case of Japan!

As a result, there is no ongoing deforestation in Japan and Germany: new forests are planted or grown at a rate at least equal to the rate at which mature forests are cut down, and the extent of forests in Japan is actually increasing. In Indonesia, however, these international standards for sustainable forestry are in many or most cases not followed by international wood and pulp and paper companies. That’s a tragedy and a big economic loss for Indonesia: as things are going now, Indonesia will not continue to enjoy forest income for the indefinite future.

An added tragedy for Indonesia is that much or most forest products are exported in the raw form of unfinished logs. But most of the value of forest products is added after the trees are cut, when the logs are worked into finished timber and paper. This added value is much greater than the value of the unfinished logs. In effect, most of the profits from Indonesia’s timber are not received by Indonesia, but by the countries to which it exports its timber.

Similar problems arise with fisheries. There are well-established international standards for managing fisheries sustainably, so that fish are caught at rates no higher than the rates at which they can spawn and grow to maturity. Sustainably managed fisheries provide an income for the indefinite future. Examples of these include the Australian rock lobster fishery and the American wild salmon fishery. But most fisheries in Indonesia are not managed sustainably. That, again, is a tragedy for Indonesia, which loses a source of income that could continue for the indefinite future – if only it were managed properly.

It is entirely within the power of the Indonesian government to obtain a good economic deal with regard to foreign exploitation of its raw products. Other countries already insist on getting a good deal for their raw products. All that the Indonesian government would have to do is license only foreign companies that meet accepted international standards for managing fisheries and forests, and insist that most of the added value of Indonesian forest products be added in Indonesia rather than in Japan or China or Taiwan or Malaysia. Sadly for Indonesia, this is not happening at present.

The Five-Point Framework

In assessing whether a country is succeeding or failing at solving its major problems, I go through a checklist of five sets of factors: human impacts on environmental resources; climate change; effects of friendly trade partners; effects of hostile neighbors, and a country’s social, political and economic conditions that either help or hurt the country in recognizing and solving its problems.

Of these five factors, it seems four are critical for Indonesia. The one that is not critical – at least at present – is hostile neighbors. Although Indonesia has had problems with other countries in the past, that’s not the case today.

But the other factors all apply to Indonesia. With regard to the first factor, I mentioned above the overexploitation and decline of Indonesia’s rich forests and fisheries. Climate change affects Indonesia, especially through the harmful effects of global warming on the country’s rich reefs and through the increased frequency of extreme climate events such as cyclones, droughts and floods.

Friendly trade partners are another problem: Indonesia has friendly relations with Japan, China, Taiwan and Malaysia, but those countries are now partly the cause of the problems in Indonesia’s fisheries and forests.

Finally, as regards the fifth factor, political considerations in Indonesia are important for understanding why the economy and the people enjoy only a small fraction of the benefits they would otherwise receive from the country’s fisheries and forests.

Societal Response

My experience is of conflicts of interest, of two types. One set of conflicts involves those I mentioned above, between international interests – which make money by exploiting Indonesian resources unsustainably and add most of the value outside the country – and Indonesia’s own interest.

The other set of conflicts is between short-term and long-term interests within Indonesia itself: many Indonesians, just like many other people around the world, pursue short-term interests to the detriment of long-term ones. An extreme example is the use of dynamite fishing in coral reefs. This yields more fish for sale in the short run, but destroys the reef and hence reduces potential fishery income in the long run.

Factors for hope

At least four sets of factors make me hopeful. One was the serious discussion of climate change that took place in Copenhagen and is expected to continue elsewhere. The second is the role of big businesses, not all of which are destructive: some international corporations have been major forces for hope for the world’s future, by managing resources sustainably.

A third factor for hope is the recent change in attitudes about environmental issues in my country, the United States, which under the Bush administration pursued shamefully ignorant and destructive environmental policies. It’s also a promising sign that the Chinese government is taking some, but not all, environmental problems seriously.

Finally, a factor for hope is exemplified by The Jakarta Post – by which I mean not just the Post itself, but world media in general. Thanks to the Post and other media, including newspapers, TV, radio and the Internet, people in one part of the world can quickly learn about what is happening in other parts.

I shall never forget being at a small, remote airport in the Indonesian province of Maluku, where passengers could watch TV while waiting for their plane. And playing on the screen while I was there was a Michael Jackson video! While the late Michael Jackson is enjoyable, there are other things one can see on TV may be more important for understanding what is going on in the rest of the world.

As a result of the Post and other media, Indonesians now have the means to understand what’s going on in other countries. Some of those things are good and admirable, and some are terrible and destructive. Through the Post and other media, you have the opportunity to watch and learn from and imitate the policies of other countries that you believe promote long-term economic success, and you also have the opportunity to see destructive things that other countries are doing and you can avoid repeating those same mistakes in Indonesia.