Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

COLLAGES OF BETTERMENT 207state in environmental policymaking (Santoso 1999;Setiawan and Hadi 2007).Although Agenda 21 Indonesia started as a promisingapproach to envisioning a sustainable future, itsinstitutional and policy supports were not fullydeveloped. The 1998 economic crisis caused bothcivil society and the government to react to the moreurgent demand for national political reforms followingthe sociopolitical upheavals. As a result, the Agenda21 Indonesia document failed to be followed up withcredible commitments for institutional change. Thefollowing observation was made in an evaluation ofthe implementation of sustainable development inIndonesia:“Despite some achievements, the implementationof Agenda 21 was less than satisfactory and muchremains to be done. The implementation of Agenda21 in Indonesia is confronted with several problems,ranging from inadequate public and governmentawareness to lack of funding and inadequatepolitical will.” (Ministry of Environment 2003, 2)Many of the goals and programs in Agenda 21 Indonesiafound their way into a business-as-usual mode, largelyassimilated into existing planning mechanisms andprocesses. The implication of this is that the distinctionbetween separate environmental issues and sustainabilityproblems (which should be seen as integrative) couldnot be established. A further consequence of this is alack of facilitation of bird’s-eye-view monitoring andthe coordination of progress toward sustainability. Theabove notwithstanding, other indirect policy reformsare not contradictory to the principles of institutionalchange for sustainability. Apart from the twin processesof democratization and decentralization, a recentpolicy change to institutionalize Corporate SocialResponsibility principles is a step in the right directionin the spirit of sustainable development.In contrast to Indonesia, policy processes on sustainabledevelopment in the Philippines can be traced backto as early as the 1980s. The first concentrated movetowards sustainable development in the Philippinesbegan in 1987 with the drafting of the PhilippineStrategy for Sustainable Development (PSSD). A semigovernmentalbody, the Philippine Council forSustainable Development (PCSD), was created tochart environmental and sustainable developmentinitiatives in the country. The PCSD adopts theprinciples of consensus-building in their structure byinstitutionalising the participation of members of civilsociety as the counterparts of government representatives.A major product of this process is the formulation ofPhilippine Agenda 21 (PA21), a blueprint for sustainabledevelopment which was launched in 1996. PresidentRamos, in the foreword to the Philippine Agenda 21(PCSD 1996), considered sustainable development as“a matter of survival.” The PA21 strategy provides, forthe critical issues of sustainability for the next thirtyyears, implementation strategies as well as time boundqualitative and process-related targets in relation to theinstitutions involved. It adopts two-pronged strategiesto map out the action agenda, creating the enablingconditions to (a) assist the various stakeholders to buildtheir capacities towards sustainable development; and(b) direct efforts at conserving, managing, protectingand rehabilitating ecosystems.In contrast to Indonesia, whereby the strategy processeshad institutional grounding in the environmentdepartment with limited influences across government,the Philippines has taken a more strategic approach, asseen in the chairmanship of the PCSD. This council ischaired by the vice-chairman of the National EconomicDevelopment Authority (NEDA), which is also thedesignated lead government agency for PCSD. Thefacts that PCSD Secretariat is located within the NEDApremises and that national planning in the Philippineshas a high component of multi-sectoral integrationhave facilitated the work of the PCSD to introducethe sustainable development framework in nationalplanning. The PA21 case has provided a conceptualframework for integrating sustainability concerns inthe country’s medium- and long-term developmentplans. Through Memorandum Order Number 33,NEDA was directed to integrate the PA21 into theMedium-Term Philippine Development Plan 1993-1998(MTPDP), which is the master plan for developmentin the Philippines. The above notwithstanding, it wasargued in the report, From Rio to Manila: Ten YearsAfter An Assessment of Agenda 21 Implementation inthe Philippines, that although the extent and quality ofimplementation of the PA21 commitments appear tobe generally high, the impact of implementation hasbeen low.Indicator systems in Indonesia and the PhilippinesThis research is premised on the distinctiveness ofsustainability as opposed to discrete environmentalissues (see Dovers 1997; Lafferty 2004). A similar logicunderpins the view that the development of sustainabilityindicator systems involves a reorientation of the macroinformationsystem from discrete environmental issuesto sustainability. This would require the extension andintegration of environmental and social assessment,Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows