Overview
This book presents a major overview of the key environmental issues affecting Indonesia today. Contributors examine the nation's development since the mid-1960's and assess Indonesia's natural resources and the environmental impact of their exploitation. The book discusses the dimensions of Indonesia's present environmental problems, the management of land resources, the ecology of rice production, environmental aspects of cash-crop development, problems related to upland use in Java, and the utilization of fishery resources in Kalimantan. The writers look at government policies and their environmental implications in a number of fields and identify emerging resource concerns. The question of sustainability is raised in the context of plans for national development in coming years. Most of the contributors to the book reach the same conclusion: that while great progress has been made in Indonesia since the mid 1960's, efforts to maintain momentum will have to consider ecological and environmental matters if development is to be genuinely sustainable, especially since it will be several more years before the effects of widespread family planning is felt in the labor force.