So  I am in Indonesia for the next two months. I am leading a small team that will develop a retrospective study of the US Government’s last quarter century’s support for environmental and natural resource management in this country: the good, the bad and the meh. Lessons learned and where do we go from here.

We’re talking mainly about USAID but State has also made key contributions. And this period saw the end of the authoritarian rule of Suharto, a rapid and chaotic transition to decentralized democracy and a stabilization and rapid economic growth.

Unfortunately, all of this history has been a disaster for the environment. USAID’s (and other donors’) efforts have created a strong, professional government and, especially, non-governmental community of professionals. However, at the same time, mega-multinationals have been strip-mining Indonesia’s biodiversity and carbon-rich forests and its huge marine fisheries.  So, the environmental (and now climate change community) have been waging a steady but still losing war against unsustainable resource exploitation.

However, in the last few years, there has been big legal and shareholder pressure against this rampage and I think there may be “light at the end of the tunnel”. The stakes couldn’t be higher at this  point.