InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA – In the Earth Day commemoration on 22 April 2024, Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WALHI) and Ford Foundation in Indonesia did discussion with some media. It was about to promote Ekonomi Nusantara model. It is a restorative economic model that involves local people’s sovereignty to cultivate, manage natural resources with the goal – to recover the threatening ecosystem in Indonesia.
The discussion was running on 29 April and was the time for WALHI to introduce Ekonomi Nusantara and would be implemented by having promotion network development and trade the products from more than 1,3 million hectares and involved more than 199.767 families in 28 provinces.
One speaker in the discussion was Zenzi Suhadi, Executive Director of WALHI. He emphasized it would be urgent to substitute exploitative economy in capitalism – base to economy that would deliver advantages both for the nature and the people.
Earth Day was taken as the significant moment to deal with climate crisis that happened for environmental exploitation and did not care about ecology, social aspects that wanted to develop economy only. In this context, Ekonomi Nusantara could be the solution to solve social – economic gap, and maintain ntural diversity.
Zenzi also explained the main principle in Ekonomi Nusantara would be about to support economic practices in the local which would be sustainable and balanced with new ecosystem where the local communities produce commodities from their own regions,” he said as in the official statement to InfoSAWIT, Wednesday (1/5/2024).
The wheel of economy in Ekonomi Nusantara, he continued, would be from the acknowledgement and protection to wilayah kelola rakyat (WKR). WKR is taken as the mechanism of integrated and participative regional cultivation that would reinforce the sovereignty of masyarakat adat dan komunitas lokal (MAKL) on natural resource cultivation.
In the same chance, Farah Sofa, Program Officer Natural Resources and Climate Change Ford Foundation Indonesia supported Ekonomi Nusantara model that WALHI proposed. This would be the same with the vision of Ford Foundation to fight for social fairness by noticing climate crisis mitigation.
By implementing Ekonomi Nusantara, the local people should get economic independency while being harmonious with the nature. The model could be the real sample to create sustainable and harmonious economy with the nature, and prioritize to welfare the indigenous people. (T2)
