Press Release Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WALHI) | Friends of the Earth Indonesia Jakarta, 06.12.2017 -Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WALHI) will hold a people’s convergence and national environmental conference on 11-13 December 2017 in Cibubur, Jakarta. The people’s convergence is a medium for indigenous peoples / local communities, men and women, who have been fighting for their livelihood and continue to struggle for recognition and protection from the state from the threat of claims both state and corporate claims, as well as communities that have managed to gain recognition from the state. Various events will be held during this event, ranging from discussions, exhibitions of various products from the communities, workshops, coaching clinic for social forestry and agrarian reform submission, as well as tribune of democracy with various forms of people's art.

This gathering will be a momentum for fellow communities to share their knowledge and experiences, strengthen each other and build solidarity among communities in the framework of fighting for the people's right to their livelihood. This event at the same time wants to assert that the people are actually able to manage their natural resources more just and sustainable compared to the large-scale corporations that proven to have failed, with the facts of crisis we are witnessing now; Inequality, poverty, tenurial conflicts, human rights abuses, ecological disasters and climate change. WALHI National Executive Director Nur Hidayati stated, "As the oldest and largest environmental organization in Indonesia, WALHI assesses that the culprit of the ecological crisis and ecological disaster in Indonesia is the economic and development system of capitalism that sees natural resource as a commodity without ever considering the carrying capacity of the environment and giving all control and management of natural resources to large-scale corporations. In the name of development and economic growth, the state right to control over natural resources regime becomes the legitimacy of the practice of land grabbing, water and all the resources of people's lives or agrarian resources. This economic and development system must be corrected, and provide avenues for recognition of people's initiatives in the management of natural resources that are proven to be more just and sustainable" she said. Since the 1990s, WALHI has offered a concept called the Community Based Forest Management System, an alternative concept over a large-scale corporation-based forest management system. This concept is now expanded into the concept of Community Managed Area or Wilayah Kelola Rakyat (WKR), in forest areas and non-forest areas also in coastal areas and small islands.

The WKR have substance of four orders or concepts, namely the power, governance, production and consumption management system manifested in the people's sovereignty over space, sovereignty over the economy, sovereignty over water, land, energy and also cultural and political sovereignty. Today, its political momentum is available through social forestry and agrarian reform programs. If this agendas are done correctly it will be able to address various structural problems, ranging from inequality, agrarian conflicts, ecological disasters and even parts of efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. State recognition of people's rights over their living spaces and their livelihood is important. This recognition is part of the effort to address structural conflicts and at the same time protection from increasingly massive threats and widespread extractive industries, ranging from mining industries, palm oil plantations, timber or industrial plantations, and even large-scale infrastructure development which ultimately only for investment purpose but not for the people.

This recognition must also be accompanied by stopping all forms of violence and criminalization against the people who are fighting for the rights to the environment and livelihood. The peak of this series of events is the National Environmental Conference that will be attended by communities and environmental defenders, environmental movement activists and civil society organizations that have been struggling for social and ecological justice from 34 provinces in Indonesia. From this conference is expected the birth of environmental political platform that will be declared together. The environmental political platform contains the people's political agenda based on the universal values of human rights and the right to a clean environment and the principle of democracy with the aim of realizing ecological and social justice in Indonesia. We hope this environmental political agenda is also supported and become a political platform by all elements of civil society, so that the agenda of realizing social and ecological justice can become mainstream in the process of democracy and politics in local and national level, for a just and sustainable Indonesia. (end) Contact: Malik Diadzin, Media Communications and Publication Staff, WALHI Executive National 081808131090