Howard to save Indonesia's forests?

Last night I heard an amusing news on Metro TV. Mr.Howard, Prime Minister of Australia stated his government is setting up a fund of US$160 millions for the purpose of saving Indonesian forests. I thought I heard wrong but the news report repeated it several times so it's confirmed.

So what's with Mr.Howard's sudden interest towards Indonesia's forest? It's true there is much to be done to save the forests in Indonesia before it's total obliterated by irresponsible and corrupted hands. If you have read my previous post Deforestation, Indonesia's latest record? that should be all clear, actions to save the forest are needed and needed quickly before it's too late.

However Mr.Howard interest in the issue comes from a different angle. Up until recently Mr.Howard didn't care much regarding environmental issues including the main one which is the global warming. That is proven in the past by the fact that Australia along with USA refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol, regarding reducing carbon dioxide emission. Mr.Bush says that “our economy is more important (than the rest of the planet)” and I guess Mr.Howard must share the same vision.

For anyone who would like to know and understand more regarding global warming, you really need to see the former US vice president Al Gore's documentary movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. The movie which won an Oscar in 2006 for the best documentary movie explains everything about global warming and what needs to be done to stop it. Hopefully Mr.Gore will run again for the president of United States, win and actually do something about the issue.

Back to Mr.Howard, few years back I had a nice chat with an Australian man. I forgot his name but he mentioned that he was a journalist and a really nice person. Anyway the conversation come to the environment issue and he asked me if I knew which country was the highest per capita producer of carbon dioxide? I replied “US”, but he said I was wrong and that the correct answer was in fact Australia. Repeating his word “we are the ones ...” filled with irony. I was surprised to learn that, so no wonder why Australia doesn't want to sign Kyoto Protocol.

So Mr.Howard's interest in saving Indonesia's forest are no other than political. He doesn't really care about the issue, however the recent polling in Australia showed that majority of population (or should I say voters) regard global warming as an important issue, while of course elections are just around the corner. So this is just another effort to get reelected.

What I found really strange is instead of doing something about the global warming issue within Australia, like say issuing new laws to reduce the carbon dioxide emission or measurements to prevent forest fires that now also happen in Australia. No he prefers to save the forests in Indonesia, hey why not in case it doesn't work he can always blame Indonesian government and if that's the price to get reelected definitely.

Saving forests throughout the world including Indonesia is important, stopping the further global warming even more. If we don't start doing something soon than in 50 or so years this planet may not be suitable anymore for any living creature including ourselves. Is that the legacy that we want to leave behind?

Read More......

Gaim now in Bahasa Indonesia !

I'm sure that many of you who have are into Open Source and or GNU/Linux had the opportunity to use Gaim Instant Messenger. An Open Source multi protocol and multi platform instant messenger. Gaim is not the only multi protocol instant messenger out there, there is for example Trillian for Windows users or Kopete for Linux users and perhaps many others.

What is multi protocol anyway ? Multi protocol means that Gaim supports a wide range of popular protocols like ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk and many others. You can use all this protocols at the same time instead of having to run each individual application which makes your desktop a very crammed place. Imagine running let's say three different protocols and at the same time talking to three people on each protocol, that would be like nine chat windows blinking at the same time. Worse case scenario, you type a wrong message in the wrong window ... brrr.

On the other hand Gaim uses tabbed chat window, so instead of having nine chat windows open in Gaim you just have one chat window with nine tabs. It's kind of similar to tabbed browsing in FireFox, in Gaim it's tabbed chatting. This way it's much more practical and organized than multiple chat windows.

Another Gaim plus is that is supports multi platforms, meaning it runs not only in GNU/Linux but also on other Open Source platforms like the BSD family and of course on MS Windows platform. So for those who have to frequently switch between platforms, work wise or else Gaim is just great because you can use it regardless of the platform instead of switching from one instant messenger to another. Of course Gaim has much more features to offer, however that is more users specific. I've been a happy Gaim user for years now.

Now being a long time user I though it would be great if Gaim was available in Bahasa Indonesia. Why ? Well Indonesia has over 220 million people so we are a big country and not everyone speaks English. In last couple years Internet is becoming more accessible to many. With the current government commitment in developing the infrastructure to provide more affordable Internet and preventing software piracy by spreading usage of Free and Open Source Software than it only makes sense that Gaim will be even more popular in Indonesia.

Adding the fact that you can use it in your native language should further spread the use of Gaim. So after a week of translating several thousand of lines and another week of waiting for translation to be officially accepted to the Gaim project, it's finally done. Gaim is now available in Bahasa Indonesia. :)
Actually Gaim is not the only instant messenger that's available in Bahasa Indonesia, for those who only use single protocol like MSN Messenger there is an Open Source clone named aMSN that is also multi platform capable.

I just hope that there will be more Indonesian people who will get involved in Open Source projects either as coder, developer or simple as translator. Everybody is welcome, so let's do a little something to help spread the knowledge and educate our nation, Indonesia.

Read More......

Deforestation, Indonesia's latest record?

Hmm, yet another fact that makes me wander about Indonesia's future along with the future of our beloved planet. Anyway as reported on the news, Indonesian Greenpeace claims that Indonesia is destroying it's forests with the highest rate in the world. For the same reason they are suggesting that Indonesia should be in the Guinness Book of Records. A kind of record nobody should ever be proud of.

So what's the damage? The answer is 51 km2 (square kilometers) of forest per day!! With that kind of rate of destruction soon there will be no forest left, along with it all the biodiversity will be gone too and not to mention earth's lungs. Combine that with green house effect it will further speed up the global warming and we all know where that ends.


Now where is the problem? It's easy to point fingers on who is to blame, anyone can do that because nowadays everyone is an expert on criticizing. Unfortunately seldom do these critics also provide solutions. In Indonesia everyone blames the government, the corruption, the ignorance, etc. Now instead of doing that we need to think what needs to be done to prevent the further damage.

If we take a look in the history we can learn that deforestation is not a new thing, some of the western countries have already been through that long before developing countries like Indonesia. So let's take a look what is the problem here before jumping to any conclusions.

Like any other developing country Indonesia is still battling poverty and corruption is still a big problem. At the moment I would say these are the main factors causing the deforestation at the current rate. Of course talking about poverty many of disadvantaged people are exploiting the forest simply to get by, to survive. However the amount of damage they do although it is not right, it is nothing compared to the damage inflicted by the logging companies and illegal logging which brings us to corruption factor where greed plays it's role.

So in brief yes the government needs to step in and re-examine all the permits given to the logging companies, close down the bad ones and punish anyone who has violated the forest. In addition new laws and more severe penalty for anyone involved in illegal logging should be introduced to prevent it happen in the future. However there is more that needs to be done to ensure that forests will be there for generations to come.

People need to be educated of importance of forests and why we need to leave them intact. Such education has to be introduced through public schools and be given since early age. Ignorance is after all as dangerous as the corrupted mind.

I remember when several years ago my parents bought a house in the area where we still live today. Not long after we planted trees in front of the house, sprouts maybe 20-30 cm in height. At the time a friend of mine who came for a visit told me that it would take ages for those sprouts to grow into a tree. My dad offered a neighbor to plant the same sprouts but he refused saying that there is no place in front of his house.

Only in two years our sprouts grow into trees several meters high and provide a nice shade to our house. It was only after that some of our neighbors decided to follow our steps, of course they still have to wait for their trees to grow but in a year or two our street will have a nice tree line and shade in hot days. Bottom line people follow only after they see the benefit.

We need to make people understand that preventing deforestation is in the end for our own good. This planet could survive without us humans, but not the other way around. That's why we need to preserve the forest, preserve the nature, make this planet a better place to live for many generations to come.

I find it quite amazing in observing plants growing, from seeds, to sprouts ... How about you?

Read More......

Indonesia's Open Source Initiative

Open Source or as I prefer to call it Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is not a new thing out there. Free Software initiative is dating back for more than two decades started by Richard Stallman in 1983 with the birth of Gnu's Not Unix (GNU) Project and the General Public License (GPL). A movement later followed by many others. Including that of a Linus Torvalds who developed the Linux kernel in 1991, the kernel that became essential part of GNU project due to original GNU kernel the GNU Hurd coming out not as expected.

I'm not sure how but later the term Linux become more popular than the GNU itself, despite the fact that Linux in fact only a kernel. The correct term a Stallman always puts it is "GNU/Linux". Anyway Linux become sort of an icon for Open Source for over a decade now. Perhaps not many outside the IT community know that beside GNU/Linux there are also other operating systems like the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), FreeBSD, etc.

Linux although being around for many years and quite popular among some IT communities became more appealing to general public after the presence of desktop manager or in other words Graphical User Interface (GUI). Many hardcore users until today prefer to use Linux in its console mode or command prompt, however for a common user GUI is a must. GNU/Linux is of course not only an operating system but nowadays there are many applications for it, from office, design, programming and so much more. One of Linux strong points is its reliability and security besides the fact that it's in most cases distributed under GPL so it's free to use. Free here being freedom, not free beer.

So how come that only now Indonesia is catching up with the Open Source tide? Well simple for years the widespread usage of pirated software remained unchecked by the government and only few years back has the law against piracy been issued and enforced. Despite that the government still has a challenging task to change the attitude towards using the legal software, even within the government itself.

Last year Indonesian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft, agreeing to purchase license for software and operating system used within the government institutions. A move that came as great disappointment to every Open Source community in Indonesia. However not many knew that government didn't have much options in doing so because otherwise it would face sanctions within international trading organizations.

With the widespread use of pirated software in government, private sector and also households not many of the users know that whenever they are online they actually let know Microsoft in particular, how many of them still are out there. These numbers are used to pressure the government, which in turn can not deny the fact the majority of software used in the country is not original and had to sign MoU or otherwise.

However even though signing the MoU, the government also realized that there is an alternative solution which is of course the Open Source. Based on that it started the Open Source Initiative with the goal to widespread the usage of FOSS, starting with the government, education sector, private sector and so forth. The policy is there and as it seems the government is really putting an effort to make it happen with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology being at helm.

At the 8th Asian Open Source Software Symposium held in Nusa Dua, Bali, the government also announced a plan to give incentives to the start up small and medium enterprises (SME) who agree to use Open Source in their business. This way Indonesian government also hopes to encourage the growth of Information Technology industry, for example the software and application development, technical support, training, help desk, etc.

The similar initiative has actually been started in past with the "Indonesia, Go Open Source" (IGOS) which is now back to life. Recently IGOS has developed their own version of live CD, derived from Fedora Core distribution. This CD similar to other live CDs like Knoppix, Ubuntu or Slax is a bootable, fully functional and includes the most common used software like the OpenOffice, Firefox and Gaim.

So with the current government focus and attention the open source movement in Indonesia will undergo an interesting change more over for the Linux enthusiasts who have been trying to introduce GNU/Linux to general population for years. In my opinion it's the right way to go and besides saving the already very limited government funds it should also spark growth and self sufficiency.

Let's go FOSS, let's Go Indonesia!

Read More......

Mangroves, saves the beaches, helps the people

Few days ago I've read an article in a magazine that was talking about mangrove. From this source I found out that there or some 70 different kinds of mangroves, from those which grow of the height of a bush to those growing up to 60 meters in height.

However the more interesting fact is that mangroves becomes more than means to protect the beach from erosion or to subside the devastating effect of Tsunami wave. Mangroves can grow in places where other plants would die in no time, because it has the ability to filter fresh water from the sea water and use it for the growth. Mangroves also retain sediments carried by the rivers thus as such it also creates new land.

What is even more interesting that mangrove forest becomes an ecosystem for marine and land life. Bottom line if mankind is willing to plant the mangroves in coastal areas, the nature will fill it with new life and this life will in turn benefit the mankind. A perfect solution for nature and mankind.

It was Gordon Sato, an American scientist and pioneer in developing drugs against cancer who was the first to be inspired in using mangroves to help the less fortunate people living on the coastal lines of Eritrea. A country still recovering from the war and famine. Sato observed that camels ate mangrove leaves, thus logically other domesticated animals could eat it too. So after conducting several unsuccessful attempts to plant mangroves, Sato finally came up with the way to do it successfully. After that he also thought the local villagers how to do the same and what benefit will they gain in doing so. Mangrove forest didn't just become a source of food for sheep and goats, but also a new habitat for mullet, crabs, oysters and other sea creatures. This mullet in turn attracts larger fish that are in turn a very nice catch for the local fishermen. The people on the coast of Eritrea now fully understand the benefit of mangroves for their future and are also planting more mangroves.

Now how about Indonesia and Bali in particular? According to the same source Indonesia has the largest total area of mangroves. However unfortunately the mangroves existence has been mostly overlooked, despite the enormous potentials even more for an archipelago country. Mangroves received attention only after the Tsunami natural disaster in Aceh few years ago and that only as protective plant against Tsunami.

Bali for example has a problem with beach abrasion in several regions, while on the other side there are still many coastal communities that live in poverty for example on the east and north areas where drought happens often. So what we can obviously do is plant the mangroves to save the beaches and help the people there to overcome the poverty. Of course to do that it would require roll of all parties included, government, NGOs and for sure the local communities. It shouldn't be difficult to obtain mangrove propagules since in south Bali there is a Mangrove Center, but before planting perhaps a brief study should be conducted on which species of mangrove would be appropriate for each area.

Learning from Eritrean experience, the leaves can be used as source of food for goats and cows and with the forming of hen new ecosystem, there should also be additional benefits from the sea potentials. Furthermore beside being used as fertilizer, cattle manure using simple technology can also be used to create gas used for cooking by the households and thus minimizing the traditional use of firewood for the purpose. Then perhaps if the cattle numbers grow which would also increase the manure gas production, the excess could be used to fuel a small power plant sufficient for a village. This way community would become more self sufficient and less dependant.

Once established same pattern can be put into work in other parts of Indonesia, particularly the East part like the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur where drought happens almost every year. All this can be done, the solution is there and the potentials are wide open.

Question is when do we start? Let's start immediately. I believe we can do it!

Read More......