Clad in natural wealth, the easternmost part of Indonesia has a huge potential as a green economic growth project. The project itself is not merely about providing low carbon and resource-efficient strategy, but it also helps increase critical assets and source public benefit. You can find the same potential in West Papua. But how good is it?
About the program
Based on unep.org, the definition of green economic growth is a low carbon, resource-efficient, and socially inclusive agenda. In this program, the growth and income in the region are part of the locals’ involvement, the government, and private investment. The point itself is to highlight the employment growth and income-driven program.
The activities, products, assets, and infrastructure investment in the program are mainly to allow reduced carbon emission and pollution. At the same time, it helps in increasing resource efficiency and enhancing energy in the region. To make it even better, the GEG program is also an effort to preserve the ecosystem and biodiversity.
Green Economic Growth Potentials
Considering the Papua land as a natural rich area, implementing GEG should be a good program to boost the local development and improve local prosperity. GEGPP or Green Economic growth Program for Papua province includes west Papua, which currently has a challenging development area in Indonesia.
It is also worth mentioning that the GEGPP addresses five critical issues that affect small farmers to develop sustainable agribusinesses enterprises. The five issues include weak or low education and capacity worker, struggle in producing a commercially viable product, difficult access credit, lack of coordination with agencies or government, and high cost of business permit.
That problem implies that the province has a chance to get better as an agribusinesses center. Unfortunately, some aspects hinder production and development. That is why GEGPP can be a solution for the situation, especially with the huge potential of the land itself that is rich in resources from the forest cover, natural flora, and the soil.
Papua has a vast forest cover that supplies forest products. A huge prospect also appears from the reliance of locals on forest land. It said that 28% of indigenous will oversee their natural asset. But 72% of villages in West Papua are situated outside the protected grove. It means they are prone to lose their right to land administration.
Huge pleat soil in the land also has ample potential to point to the chance of better agriculture. With proper management, the pleat land or soil will also take part in water control. Not to mention that proper forest and pleat soil usage will prevent forest fire, improve carbon emission, and boost the local prosperity or economic status.
Challenge And issues to pass
While the idea GEGPP itself can solve a problem in landscape usage, management, sustainable practice, and local economic growth, the implementation is not as easy as people think. In general, the province has a huge spread of natural and environmental prospects. It makes the implementation harder since the spreading landscape means a bigger and balanced reach.
The vast land and challenging landscape itself are also prone to funding inequality. However, there are also many aspects that government or investors need to fulfill. The first one is to fulfill the requirement for the west Papua land development. It is because the province employs Otsus or special autonomy law.
The special autonomy can help decrease the chance of natural and environmental resources exploitation, which can affect the natural biodiversity. At the same time, the local education states are not considered as on par with the requirement. Low knowledge and outdated technology to boost environment preservation are still lacking.
Some other issues come from the inadequate infrastructure, including access for the locals to natural resources. Even though many indigenous are pretty used to living with nature, the change in the agribusinesses can affect the day-to-day routine. It will create inequality in the locals’ resource management.
However, it does not imply that the GEGPP is impossible to implement. Government, locals, and investors need to uses a good strategy to keep on the focus. At the same time, the emphasis will not stray from the local identity and cultures. Hopefully, indigenous can welcome the idea and realize the plan for a better region’s maturation and growth.
West Papua GEG project can start by continuing the land use, fulfilling the regulation, and fitting the land availability. After that, the government needs to increase better access to business capital and resources, including funds, physic, nature, finance, social, or human resource. There are also mention in diversification, productivity, fair chain, and connection.
Considering how nature-dependent locals are, implementing green economic growth should be the perfect solution for the province. It does not only help preserve the natural wealth and resource-rich area but also assists in increasing the efficiency of environmental approaches. There are issues to highlights. But using a proper strategy and boost will help increase local prosperity.
