Asia's Eco-Warriors [incl. Tanya Marinka Alwi of Indon] (fwd)

["M.G.G. Pillai" <pillai@mgg.pc.my>]

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Date: 04 Mar 2000 13:07:21
From: tapol@gn.apc.org
Reply-To: "Conference act.indonesia" <indonesia-act@igc.org>
To: Recipients of indonesia-act <indonesia-act@igc.org>
Subject: Asia's Eco-Warriors [incl. Tanya Marinka Alwi of Indon]

From: TAPOL <tapol@gn.apc.org>
Subject: Asia's Eco-Warriors [incl. Tanya Marinka Alwi of Indon]

Received from Joyo Indonesian News

AsiaWeek
March 10, 2000

SPECIAL REPORT

The Greening Of Asia

The Eco-Warriors

Eight men and women who were fighting for the environment long before it 
became fashionable 

TANYA MARINKA ALWI - Indonesia
Saving the mermaid's song

Tanya Marinka Alwi's love affair with the environment began early. When she 
was a child, her nanny regaled her with stories about mermaids and other sea 
creatures. At night, as they listened to waves crashing against the rocks, 
the nanny told her: "It is music played by the mermaid." Alwi recalls going 
to the beach after school to pick up the garbage because, according to the 
nanny, "the mermaids won't play their music anymore if the sea is dirty."

Now 38, Alwi has made a career out of encouraging mermaids to make music. For 
the past 15 years, she has been working privately to protect ocean resources 
around her native Maluku province in Indonesia. Her father, the sultan of the 
Bandas (a small island chain in the south of the Malukus), was initially 
opposed to his daughter's work. "I sent you overseas for your schooling, but 
I don't see you making any significant progress in the way you are living," 
he told her. But Alwi was convinced that conservation was a sufficiently 
important "way of living."

Her decision to dedicate her life to the cause came when she was diving in 
the Banda Sea. She discovered that the coral reef had been damaged; 
fishermen, working on behalf of a group of businessmen, were bombing the reef 
as a quick way to harvest valuable decorative fish. "It brings us a good 
income," the fishermen told her. 

Neither her father nor local government officials proved sympathetic to the 
plight of the reef, so Alwi flew directly to Jakarta to lobby the relevant 
ministers. Several months later, the fishing licenses of those responsible 
were revoked by the Department of Agriculture. Alwi had won Round One, but 
she also realized that there was a need to diversify the local economy. With 
international prices for nutmeg high, she encouraged locals to plant the 
spice: "The people needed income, so if I was going to be successful in 
stopping them from bombing the reef, they had to have an alternative way of 
making money."

After more than a decade of work, she has enjoyed some success. She has 
established the conservationist Banda Foundation and attracted big names to 
its board. She also managed to convince UNESCO to sponsor an international 
marine workshop in the Bandas. The scientists who attended recommended that 
the islands be nominated as an international heritage site.

Her father's position has helped her work. His connections mean that she has 
access to influential people who otherwise would not speak to her. "In this 
case I have to use my 'power,'" she says. Her constant lobbying in Jakarta 
has made her a familiar face in the corridors of government.

But she has had her share of difficulties and frustrations too. No matter who 
her father is, approaching corporate groups for sponsorship is always a 
thankless task. Many of her peers do not remain in the conservationist 
movement for long, but use their experience as a springboard to move into 
business. Relations with other NGOs have often been less than friendly; they 
are, she thinks, jealous of her success.

Still, she has no regrets about her career choice. What makes her most happy 
is that her father is no longer upset over her supposed lack of success. 
"Success is not always translated by financial convenience," she says. The 
burden of responsibility doesn't get any lighter, though. The past year's 
religious strife in the Malukus has given her a new line of work: 
fund-raising to help the victims. She says sadly of the situation: "Now you 
cannot go fishing on the same boat as people from the opposite religion." An 
activist's work, it seems, is never finished.

By Dewi Loveard/Jakarta

-----------------
  
MAHESH CHANDRA MEHTA
Conservationist Counsel 

During one of his earliest environmental battles, New Delhi lawyer Mahesh 
Chandra Mehta presented a bottle of brackish water to an attorney 
representing five offending factories and asked him to drink the contents. 
The attorney refused. Mehta then turned to the panel of Supreme Court judges, 
waving the sample of dark, acid-laden liquid from a 40-meter-deep well in 
India's western desert state of Rajasthan. "This is the water thousands of 
villagers are drinking," Mehta told the bench. "Why can't he [the defense 
counsel] drink it?" Evidently seeing the point the activist-lawyer was trying 
to make, the judges ordered the five factories closed.

Since that court victory a decade ago, Mehta has won some 40 cases of 
environmental litigation, earning the epithet "Mr. Clean." The shelves of his 
makeshift office in New Delhi are overflowing with trophies and citations, 
including the prestigious 1997 Ramon Magsaysay award for public service and 
the 1993 United Nations Environmental Program Global 500 award. In the midst 
of the prizes, however, a single plaque stands out. It captures the essence 
of Mehta's ecological activism - and, indeed, that of numerous others of his 
persuasion - with these words: "Clean environment starts with me." 

Mehta's best-known crusade is his rescuing of the famous Taj Mahal from slow 
death in the early 1990s. Industrial air pollution from the city of Agra, 
where the Taj is located, was ruining the white marble of the 17th-century 
monument. In response to Mehta's petition, the Supreme Court ordered the 
closure of as many as 230 factories in Agra. Some 300 local industries were 
forced to install pollution-control equipment. Another of Mehta's petitions 
has helped reverse the colossal damage done on a daily basis to the Ganges, 
India's largest and holiest river; the municipalities of 250 filth-spewing 
towns near the river have now installed sewage plants. 

Trying to clean up India's water and air has been an uphill battle for Mehta. 
The authorities, he says, are "lethargic" and offer little or no help to 
ecological activists. Partly as a result of government indifference - and not 
infrequent collusion with offenders - Mehta has been up against a powerful 
industrial mafia that he says is "running the country." His life has been in 
danger on several occasions. Once, when the Supreme Court was hearing one of 
his petitions against illegal quarrying, thugs showed up at his house. Mehta 
was threatened with dire consequences if he continued with his activism. But 
the lawyer was unstoppable. He went on to win a case that led to the 
relocation of 1,300 industrial units from the heart of the capital to the 
outskirts. Days later, while Mehta was delivering a lecture in a New Delhi 
auditorium, a group of ruffians accosted him. He was saved only by the timely 
intervention of the audience. 

Beside being a fierce litigant, Mehta is an avid campaigner who regularly 
undertakes "green marches." Accompanied by his activist wife Radha and their 
15-year-old daughter Tarini, he has covered more than 2,000 kilometers and 
supervised the planting of some 750,000 saplings. "More than court battles," 
says Mehta, "it is grassroots work that is more important." In a poor and 
populous country like India, he explains, people's participation is crucial 
for the success of an ecological campaign. That is how he plans to tackle two 
upcoming - and daunting - projects: cleaning up all the 14 major rivers of 
India and saving the Himalaya mountain range from what seems to be slow but 
sure environmental degradation.

By Ritu Sarin/New Delhi

--------------
 
MIYATA HIDEAKI 
Japan's dioxin-buster 

As pure as mother's milk is not a phrase one is likely to hear from Miyata 
Hideaki. The respected scientist long suspected that the milk from many 
mothers' breasts might be contaminated with the controversial chemical 
pollutant dioxin - something confirmed by tests he subsequently carried out. 
If it were up to him, most mothers would breast-feed their babies for only 
the first three months before switching to formula. "I can't help but believe 
it is safer to keep our babies away from mother's milk," he says.

In recent years, dioxin pollution has become a national obsession in Japan. 
One reason: it is closely linked to the burning of trash. Dioxin is often 
released when plastics and other wastes containing chlorine-based chemicals 
are burned. More than three-quarters of Japan's garbage is consumed at about 
3,840 government-approved incinerators. Until recently, few if any controls 
on dioxin release existed.

When Miyata, now 55, first read about dioxin in a U.S. government research 
paper in the early 1970s, the chemical's dangers were not well known. Most 
Japanese and others would remain ignorant until the adverse effects of Agent 
Orange, a herbicide that the Americans used in the Vietnam War to defoliate 
forests, became more widely known. Indeed, it was only about four or five 
years ago that Japanese really awakened to the dioxin pollution surrounding 
them.

Although trained as a veterinarian, Miyata cut his teeth as an environmental 
scientist researching another toxic chemical, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), 
at the Osaka Prefecture Institute of Public Health. Working on Japan's worst 
instance of PCB poisoning, the Kanemi Rice Oil Case that killed 126 people in 
1968, he and his colleagues isolated two additional toxins in the PCB-tainted 
oil, both of which the World Health Organization included in its list of 
carcinogens in 1998.

In the 1980s, Miyata joined Setsunan University near Kyoto. His team turned 
its attention to dioxin contamination from garbage incinerators. He didn't 
have to look far. Excessive amounts of dioxin were found in the ashes of all 
three municipal incinerators in Osaka. More disturbingly, he found the 
chemical to be present in mother's milk, an indication that the carcinogen 
was being passed on to the next generation.

But the issue did not really hit home until the mid-1990s, when the plight of 
Tokorozawa, a city north of Tokyo, became news. Because of the presence of 
numerous industrial waste incinerators in the area, some operating illegally, 
residents were assaulted by foul odors, while pine trees were blackened and 
moss was dying. Many people suffered from persistent coughing and sore eyes.

Faced with official indifference to their problem, residents turned to 
Miyata. He analyzed the soil and found high doses of dioxin. His detailed - 
and widely publicized - report finally drove the city fathers to action. In 
1997, Tokorozawa became the first Japanese city with its own code for 
regulating dioxin release. Soon, requests for soil analysis were flooding 
into Miyata's office from all over Japan.

The Japanese government has generally been slow to acknowledge the dangers of 
dioxin. It has lagged behind other developed countries in setting standards 
for daily intake. But thanks in part to the efforts of Miyata, these 
standards have been progressively tightened. The latest regulation, which 
went into effect in January, aims by 2002 to cut dioxin release by 90% from 
1997 levels.

"Dioxin is a symbol of our contemporary life of mass consumption based on 
mass production," says Miyata. This mass culture exacts a price, and people 
are paid back for what they do - or don't do - to the environment. If people 
continue to live indifferently, warns Miyata, it will be like "strangling 
ourselves."

By Murakami Mutsuko/Tokyo

-------------

CHOI YUL 
Subversive to patriot

Like the activism of many South Korean students in the 1970s and 1980s, Choi 
Yul's was ignited by a hatred of the repressive governments of Park Chung Hee 
and Chun Doo Hwan. In fact, he can thank those despots for his decision to go 
green. It was 1975, and Choi was doing his first stint of jail time for 
antigovernment activities. To pass the time, he turned to books. "I read 
voraciously about the environment in Korean, English and Japanese," he says. 
"In 1976, I decided to dedicate my life to saving Korea's environment."

Six years and another jail term later, he founded the country's first 
antipollution group, which consisted of three members and operated out of an 
office the size of a small bathroom. Chun's government, not noted for its 
tolerance of activism, no matter how innocuous, started to harass the 
members. The secret police shadowed the activists and tapped their 
telephones. "They spread lies that we were trying to overthrow the 
government," says Choi.

Despite the intimidation, Choi continued with his crusade, finding airtime on 
a local radio station to publicize high disease levels at industrial towns. 
Ulsan, on the southeastern coast, was a case in point. "Orchards there used 
to produce huge, juicy pears," says Choi. "But the pollution shrank them to 
the size of a fist and made their skin hard." Residents of Ulsan and nearby 
Onsan suffered from pollution-induced ailments. Choi notes: "Of 10,000 people 
in Onsan, 700 had bone disease."

With the advent of the democratic era, marked by Roh Tae Woo's election as 
president in 1987, Choi used his newfound freedom to combine disparate green 
groups into the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement. KFEM made 
national headlines in 1989 when it succeeded in stopping the construction of 
a nuclear power plant. It has also protested against France's nuclear testing 
in the South Pacific and opposed the construction of golf courses, which in 
Korea can mean the bulldozing of entire mountains. Last year, the group 
staged a 33-day sit-in to draw attention to plans to dam a river.

Choi, above, has gone from subversive to patriot. Magazines have voted him 
Korea's most influential person. He won the Goldman Environmental Award in 
1995, the first Korean to receive the coveted prize. His new credibility has 
won over even his old enemies: A few years ago, Korea's intelligence agency, 
whose agents had beaten Choi two decades earlier, asked him to lecture at its 
headquarters.

But Choi refuses to rest. Charging that the government is paying lip service 
to conservation, he continues to crisscross the country to raise awareness. 
Korea, he says, must tackle the environmental crisis brought on by its 
profligate consumption of fossil fuels. In the longer term, mankind must 
rediscover its oneness with nature. Twenty years ago, this was the stuff of 
heresy. Today, it is fast becoming gospel.

By John Larkin/Seoul

---------
 
XIE ZHENHUA 
Blue skies over Beijing 

On Oct. 1 last year - China's National Day - Beijingers marveled at the blue 
sky they had not seen for years. Because the occasion marked the golden 
anniversary of the People's Republic, smoke-belching factories around the 
city had been closed down temporarily prior to the big day. "By the end of 
the year 2002," declares Xie Zhenhua, the tall and portly environment 
minister, "we hopefully will have blue skies [over Beijing] every day." He 
says the government is spending about $5.7 billion to meet that goal.

Xie, 50, became head of the State Environmental Protection Administration 
seven years ago. In 1998, the government boosted SEPA's profile - and its 
powers - when the agency was given the status of a ministry. "Before, we were 
mostly educating the people," says Xie. "Now, we try to implement the law. 
Environmental protection is a national objective." China has had an 
environmental code on its books since 1978, but this was hardly enforced over 
two decades of rapid economic growth. Xie aims to change that: "Pollution is 
no longer going unpunished. We are even meting out prison sentences."

To be sure, Xie, below, is aware of the obstacles he faces. For one, not 
everybody in the government has come aboard the green bandwagon. With the 
National People's Congress and state committees meeting in Beijing this 
month, Xie will be busy briefing lawmakers and officials on green issues. But 
he concedes: "Many are concerned mostly with developing the economies of 
their regions without giving much thought to the environment."

Despite stepping up its campaign to improve air and water quality in recent 
years, the government still faces a major clean-up. In the city of Chongqing 
alone, the World Bank estimates that 940,000 lives will be lost by 2020 
because of pollution-related health problems. The air in a typical big city 
in China may have 10 times the particulate count of an equivalent urban area 
in the U.S. "China needs to learn from industrialized countries," says Xie. 
It took generations for green consciousness to take hold in the West, so 
China - and Xie - has a long battle ahead.

By Anne Meijdam/Beijing

--------------

AIDA VELASQUEZ 
A nun with a mission 

In 1981, when diarrhea persisted among residents of the remote coastal 
village of Botilao in the central Philippines, they sought help from a 
Catholic nun. They were not asking for divine intervention, but looking for a 
rational explanation, which they believed Sister Aida Velasquez could 
provide. She did. 

Laboratory analysis of the waters of Calancan Bay showed large concentrations 
of heavy metals such as cadmium, zinc, lead and mercury. The cause: the 
dumping of mine tailings into the bay by the Marcopper Mining Corp., one of 
Southeast Asia's largest copper mines. Velasquez's investigation helped set 
in motion events that eventually led to the mine's closure. 

The nun's career as an activist began in 1976, when she was sent to meet the 
spiritual needs of factory workers in Bataan province, not far from the 
Philippines' only nuclear-power plant project. Trained as a chemical engineer 
at Manila's Mapua Institute of Technology, Velasquez was drawn into a debate 
over health risks when a priest asked her to help his parishioners understand 
nuclear power. While immersed in that issue, she was enlisted in the cause of 
residents of San Juan, Batangas province, who were opposed to a copper 
smelter being built in their town. The project's suspension in 1978 was the 
Philippines' first peaceful environmental victory by an organized group. 
Velasquez says she never made use of public protests. "My role is to 
disseminate information," she explains.

By 1981, her religious order, the Missionary Benedictine Sisters, recognized 
her ecological crusade as her own special mission and allowed her to work on 
it full time. She helped form groups to bring home the green message, 
including, in 1985, the formation of Lingkod Tao-Kalikasan (In the Service of 
the Human-Earth Community), to nurture ecological consciousness, especially 
among rural communities. But Velasquez's greatest environmental legacy is 
helping to craft Philippine Agenda 21, a lengthy ecological check-list to 
guide the country for the next 27 years.

Now 61, Velasquez lectures and writes on the environment, while representing 
the Philippines at international conferences. In 1997, the U.N. Environment 
Program honored her as one of the "25 Women Leaders in Action." UNEP noted 
that in most parts of the world women are the first to suffer from 
environmental degradation. "But women are also agents of change and the key 
to achieving sustainable development." 

By Raissa Robles

---------
 
BARRIE COOK 
Hero in a suit 

Money bellows in Hong Kong. Its heroes are tycoons, its buildings monuments 
to wealth. Not exactly fertile ground for environmental movements. Enter 
Barrie Cook, a 57-year-old Englishman with impeccable corporate credentials. 
As executive director of Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings, he leads the 
cement division of one of Hong Kong's top conglomerates. So when he brought 
together 30 international and local business organizations to speak out on 
pollution, the government listened. Cook's Business Coalition on the 
Environment argues that sorely needed top talent, especially those people 
wanted for the often-touted New Economy, will not set up home in Hong Kong if 
they and their families cannot breathe the air. 

"How will you be able to drive the economy forward?" the businessman asks. 
While others had made the argument before, this time it has sunk in. Chief 
Executive Tung Chee-hwa dedicated much of his annual policy address last 
October to measures to help clean up Hong Kong.

Cook is anxious to deflect praise for his efforts, pointing out that many 
others have devoted their lives to the cause. But he does admit that - for 
better or worse - he has an advantage. "One of the biggest credentials I have 
is that I'm both an environmentalist and a businessman," he says. And a 
diplomat. Convincing the varied business groups in the Coalition to back 
decisions that may adversely affect their bottom lines is not easy. Cook 
succeeds by being open-minded and conciliatory. It also helps that he 
practices what he preaches. Even though the construction industry accounts 
for half the waste dumped in Hong Kong's rapidly rising landfills, the cement 
chief has made it his personal mission to push through charges that will 
discourage this activity and promote waste reduction and recycling. "I think 
one has to take a certain amount of short-term pain to make sure the future 
is sustainable," he says.

But time is running out. Hong Kong's ever-growing population is putting 
strains on the environment. "It's like running in front of a tidal wave," 
Cook warns. "If somebody falls down, the wave will just take us out." But the 
polluters shouldn't count on him being the one to stumble.

By Yasmin Ghahremani

--------

WONG HOW-MAN 
Explorer and savior 

Wong How-man has just returned from a three-week expedition to the 
China-Myanmar border. Sitting in his Hong Kong office, he reports that there 
is good news and bad. China has cracked down on illegal timber activities in 
the area, he says, but the loggers have simply moved into Myanmar, where 
controls are slack. Wong, left, wants to help protect the region's rare 
tropical trees, as well as the livelihoods of people on both sides of the 
crossing. "Projects along the border can also carry a secondary message of 
peace and friendship," he says.

Those are pretty lofty goals for someone who started his professional life 
not intending to save anything. All Wong wanted to do was explore - first as 
a photographer and writer for National Geographic magazine, then as head of 
the China Exploration and Research Society (CERS). He founded the 
organization in 1987 to research remote corners of China and document its 
heritage. But somewhere along the way, he ran into his conscience. "It was 
very hard to discover things and then record them dying," he says. Wong 
decided that where his group could make a difference, it would set up small 
programs.

In 1993, CERS discovered important wintering grounds for black-neck cranes in 
China's Yunnan province. But many were being shot by farmers trying to keep 
them from eating newly planted seeds. CERS hired workers to feed the 
endangered birds, and recruited others to educate the locals about the need 
to protect the culturally symbolic animals. As attitudes have changed, the 
cranes have started returning to Yunnan. 
 
CERS has been particularly aggressive in publicizing the plight of the 
Tibetan antelope, an endangered species it began studying in the early 1990s. 
The animal is illegally hunted for its luxurious wool, called shahtoosh, 
which is sold in Kashmir to be made into shawls that retail for between 
$1,000 and $5,000. Wong, 50, recalls with horror a 1998 expedition to the 
antelopes' calving grounds in the Altun Mountain Nature Reserve. Poachers had 
left some 70 carcasses, including those of newborns. By getting this and 
other stories told internationally, Wong has helped train the spotlight on 
the illegal trade in shahtoosh. 

Wong's hope is that as environmental awareness grows, he will be able to move 
back into pure exploration. "Conservationists are not a dying species. 
Explorers are," he says. And those who are dedicated to saving what they 
discover are perhaps the rarest breed of all.

By Yasmin Ghahremani 

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TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 0181 771-2904   Fax: 0181 653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
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Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
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26 years - and still going strong 
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