Indonesia – Page 2 – Millisphere

Millisphere, noun. A region with approximately one thousandth of the total world population, around seven million people.

Last Tuesday I saw the new crescent moon appear in the winter sky and I warmly remembered the tropics. On the island of Java (population 145 million) in Indonesia (over 260 million and doubling every 35 years) I knew that all hell would be breaking loose as a hundred million Muslims hit the road for Idul Fitri (Eid-al-Fitr in Arabic) the festival that marks the end of Ramadan.

A few days on either side of Idul Fitri is not a good time to travel in Java and I can remember once pushing my travel companion up into a baggage car at the end of a packed passenger train so that we could make the ferry connection to Bali.

We had been in Surabaya during Idul Fitri and we had been randomly invited in for ice-cream and a game of scrabble by a widow who prided herself on her command of the English language. During Idul Fitri it is considered good form to host some wayfaring strangers.

With twenty millispheres on a land area about the size of the North Island of Aotearoa, Java is world’s the most populace island and the millisphere of Surabaya (metropolitan population nearly 7 million) includes Indonesia’s second largest city.

I’ve passed through this congested, chaotic, polluted metropolis a couple of of times, but I am tempted to go back and check out the changes since the election of Surabaya’s Green mayoress, Tri Rismaharini.

Affectionately known as “Bu (Mother) Risma,” she is an architect with a masters in Urban Development and she headed Surabaya’s Town Planning Department before winning the mayoralty in 2010.

Since 1999 Indonesia has experienced one of the most radical decentralisation programs in the world. During the 1998 Asian economic meltdown it was observed that Surabaya was more financially resilient than Jakarta, where the state had a strong (and often corrupt) guiding hand in the capital’s economy.

In 2012 Surabaya was awarded the ASEAN Environmentally Sustainable City award. Today it takes 17 days to process a foreign direct investment application in Surabaya compared with 50 days in Jakarta.

Mayor Rismaharini’s policy was to make the most of “empty” land. Under her leadership the city constructed sixty public parks with Wi-Fi access, libraries and sports facilities. These parks are used for public meetings, weddings and “water absorptions spaces”. Unlike Jakarta, Surabaya now has virtually no flooding.

“Bu Risma” developed a partnership with the kampongs (villages) that make up Surabaya. The city would repair the lanes (designed to exclude cars) and drains and the residents cleaned the rubbish out of the canals and established and maintain the landscaping, creating an urban forest of green lanes and streets. Fish farms have returned to the river as the water quality improves and there is an active mangrove regeneration program.

The new mayoress inherited a rubbish crisis – common to many large Indonesian cities. Surabaya’s main rubbish dump (the Keputih Disposal Area) had just been closed because of opposition from local residents (and because it was full). The amount of waste Surabaya now produces has been halved since 2010.

Utilising aid from a sister city in Japan, Surabaya generates energy by burning rubbish and methane from landfills and now collects data on waste volume and points of waste generation etc. It has created composting stations and “waste bank portals” where the city buys recyclables, crediting the resident’s account with an app. on their phone.

In the last decade “Green and Clean” Surabaya has seen big changes in the liveability of the city. “There is a new sense of vitality and common purpose,” residents report. The city runs an annual essay writing competition for school children on the subject: “If I were the Minister for the Environment,” with a first prize of a trip to meet Australian junior Greenies.

Another place I’d go back to is the PPLH Seloliman Environment Centre, up a volcano near Trawas, a couple of hours drive from Surabaya. At Seloliman there is a dormitory which was built with aid money from the government of New Zealand. The dormitory is used to host parties of school children from the kampongs of Surabaya.

Millisphere, n. A discrete region populated by roughly one thousandth of the total world population; a bit over seven million people (but anywhere between 3.5 and 14million will do); a lens through which to study human geography.

When I first sat down and divided the world into millispheres Bali was just under my cut-off limit of 3.5 million people. Now, a decade later, Bali’s population stands at nearly 4.5 million. Indonesians coming to take advantage of Bali’s inexorable growth in tourism have been the main driver of this recent population spurt.

Before 1963 there were only three hotels in Bali. In 1963 President Sukarno (who was Javanese but whose wife was Balinese) built the Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur (the first hotel on Bali’s South Coast).

During the 1960’s hippies, travelling by bus, train and ferry through Indonesia, discovered Kuta Beach before there were hotels there, staying in Losmans (traveller accommodation, usually attached to a the family home). These days Kuta Beach is lined with concrete hotels, not dissimilar to Australia’s Gold Coast.

In 1970 the international airport was built near Denpasar, opening the floodgates to national and international tourists. Bali now receives over 3.5 million foreign tourists and 5 million Indonesian tourists every year, but it has come at a cost to their environment.

Bali is still rated the highest for water quality of all of Indonesia’s 33 provinces but because of overexploitation by the tourism resorts 200 out of Bali’s 400 rivers are dry before they reach the sea. On the Bali’s South Coast, where most of the five star hotels and million dollar mansions are, there are now water shortages.

The profligate use of water in the tourist resorts stands in marked contrast to the Balinese Subuk water management system. Developed in the 9^th century, the Subuk irrigation system is a complex, pulsing ecosystem administered by the priests from Bali’s Hindu temples. Based on a triumvirate of humans, earth and gods the Subuk system starts with the management of the forests where the waters originate. The water then flows through canals, tunnels, weirs, villages and temple water-gardens before supplying 1200 collectives, of up to 500 farmers each, with water to irrigate their rice terraces.

Tourists, with their natural suspicion of Third World water, demand their drinking water in plastic bottles, which end up in the 20,000 cubic metres of rubbish produced by the tourist resorts of Bali every day. Seventy-five percent of Balinese rubbish dumps are “informal” and during the rainy season plastic discharges into the sea and washes up on the tourist beaches.

It is estimated that, for every one foot (300mm) of coastline in the world, three singlet bags full of plastic rubbish ends up in the sea every year. Last year on holiday in Northland I discovered a line of multi-coloured plastic particles along the high tide mark all the way up the West Coast above Auckland.

From the 24^th to the 27^th of February this year the World Ocean Summit was held in Bali to discuss, amongst other things, the amount of plastic waste that ends up in the sea. Optimistically subtitled: “bridging the gap between sustainability and economic growth,” this talkfest was held in the five star Nusa Dua Beach Resort on Bali’s South Coast. Their topic for discussion could equally have been: “are we part of the problem?”

Enjoying their time in Bali’s tropical paradise were business leaders, representatives from the United Nations, NGOs and governments and a handful of academics. Eighty-six percent of them came from North America and Europe with only ten percent from the Asia/Pacific (many of the rivers of Asia are clogged with plastic). Fully ninety-six percent of the attendees surveyed said that the conference had been enjoyable and “very useful”.

We tourists are not the only ones to blame. Not too long ago most of the rubbish we humans produced was organic and biodegraded. Now plastic is everywhere and it’s hard to buy even the simplest food item that doesn’t come on a styrofoam tray and wrapped in polythene.

Once, while waiting to board a plane at Denpasar International Airport, I idly counted the number of times the plastic wrapping machine went around a suitcase belonging to one of a group of chattering Australian tourists – it was an astonishing seventeen times.

Eavesdropping I learned that the Australians had enjoyed their time at Kuta Beach. “Jeez we had fun, got peesed every noight,” one said … leaving the locals to pick up their empties and their rubbish.