Jakarta, Ekuatorial – Three major issues, regulation, campaign, and permit, will be crucial for environment ministry to tackle, said Siti Nurbaya, Minister of Environment and Forestry, in Jakarta, on Wednesday (29/10).
“Permit is an instrument for control. So, it should be corrected to the public that permit is not a transaction,” Nurbaya said adding that she promised permits will be more simple and transparent in the future.
As a result, she said that permits were not just about administrative but also monitoring in the field. “So, officials related to monitoring role must look at the fields as much as possible. Especially, we learn that most of environment issues are on-the-ground problems,” she said.
Besides monitoring, she said that permit was an instrument for development which means it can result to people’s welfare. “Sustainability is managing natural resources is crucial but I think that it’s already described in the new [environment] law and it’s already clear what needs to be done,” she said. “But, the bottom line is that these permits must be eased for business world, so that natural resources can be used for people’s welfare.”
She said that president’s instruction was to make permits for business people as simple as possible. “So, it needs to be quick, simple, cheap, and know how much it costs,” she said adding that the ministry will not be reckless to issue permits and must comply to three requirements.
“The first one is its growth. It’s impossible to plant rubber in swamps, for instance,” she said. The second requirement was management. The third is conservation. “So, if these types of lands are prone for landslides then it would not be eligible for permits. Currently, degraded lands are resulted from over-used lands.”
Related to central and regional government coordination, she said that natural resources were in complicated situation. But, she said that she had knowledge about the country’s situation and its regional autonomy state. There were complications between administrative, jurisdiction, budget, and natural resources.
“So, we need to look into the laws to see for details about provincial, national, and districts/cities jurisdictions,” she said. Januar Hakam