Sustainable Environmental Management: Lessons from Indonesia

by Jatna Supriatna, Ralph Lenz

Overview

Environmental sustainability in the developing world is the focus of this book. Our purpose will not, however, be to produce an endless list of huge numbers of facts about the many developing countries. Indonesia could be considered a proto-typical example of a developing world country. As an archipelago situated along the equator in Southeast Asia, its location is ideal for a prototype—almost all developing countries are tropical. Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Papua in particular, contain a substantial portion of the world’s remaining equatorial rainforests; rainforest management is among the most pressing global sustainability problems.

However, Indonesia’s forests are far from monolithic; they include a large set of different biome types. Indonesia’s population is multi-ethnic, a characteristic not only of other very large developing countries like India and Nigeria, but of nearly every African country and of many other formerly colonized regions. Another factor favoring a prototype designation is a relatively recent escape from the category of severe under-development. Indonesia ranked eighth in the world in real per capita GDP growth rate between 1960 and 2018, not an atypical outcome for Southeast Asian market economies—Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Myanmar ranked even higher (EarthTrends of World Resources Institute). Like most developing countries, economic growth has mainly been sparked by exports of energy and mineral extraction products and plantation crops. There is also manufacturing growth; Indonesia has seven ‘million’ cities and the world’s sixth-largest metro area by population. At the same time, many of the population remain engaged in agriculture; many are extremely impoverished. Environmental problems Indonesia encounters in its path to economic development are typical of those in other developing countries, and solutions it may find can serve as guidelines for other developing countries anticipating a similar economic take-off. This book consists of 21 chapters on sustainability efforts in Indonesia by many stakeholders, government, local government, private sectors, NGOs and communities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031766411
Publisher:	Springer Nature Switzerland
Publication date:	07/24/2025
Edition description:	2024
Pages:	630
Product dimensions:	6.61(w) x 9.45(h) x (d)

About the Author

Prof. Dr. Jatna Supriatna is the Chairman of Research Center for Climate Change University of Indonesia. After finishing his Master of Science (1986) and Doctorate degree (1991) from the University of New Mexico, USA, plus pre and postdoctoral at Columbia University in New York, he serves as Senior lecturer at the Biology Dept., Director of Biodiversity and Conservation Studies, Coordinator of Graduate Program on Conservation Biology of the University of Indonesia. He has also been an active member of several international organizations: IUCN-World Conservation of Protected Area, IUCN-Specialist Survival Commission-Primate Specialist Group, International Primatological Society, Society for Conservation Biologist and many others. He published 30 books mostly in Indonesia’s Biodiversity and Environment and more than 190 articles in international journals (Science, Nature, Conservation Biology, Scientific Reports, Global ecology and Conservation, Sustainability, Primates, Evolution, Primate Conservation, Herpetologica, and many others). Two of his books, Biologi Konservasi (Conservation Biology 2007) and Menyelamatkan Alam Indonesia (Saving of Indonesia’s Nature 2009) are among the best seller on the environment books in Indonesia. In 2009, together with Dr. Sharon Gursky authored edited books “Indonesia Primates” and “Ecotourism and Indonesia’s Primates,” published by Springer, New York.

Prof. Dr. Ralph Lenz is a professor emeritus of geography at Wittenberg University in Ohio. His PhD was from Rutgers University in 1977. After one year at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, he taught at Wittenberg University from 1976 to 2015, serving as geography chair 1991-2000 and 2006-2015. He was also an environmental science faculty member, urban studies program director in 1981-1982, 1984, and 1988-1991, and East Asian studies interim chair in 2013-2014. He has been a member of the American Association of Geographers, serving as director for Southeast Asia, 1992-1994 and 2013-2015 for the Asian geographers’ specialty group. Also a member of the American Geographical Society and the Association for Asian Studies and served on the Fulbright National Screening Committee for Southeast Asia in 2007, 2008, and 2012. His primary academic interests have included atmospheric science, agriculture, soils, and rainforest environments; he taught meteorology classes and human ecology, emphasizing population, food, energy, and pollution, for many years. Early publications in the journal Geographical Analysis were quantitative/theoretical, about analyses of map patterns with urban applications in chapters of two books. Since 1983, Southeast Asia has been his main focus, with 30 visits and various publications about Indonesia and Vietnam in Social Science and Medicine and Focus on Geography.

Table of Contents

Environment and Sustainability Science.- Sustainable Development.- Global-Local Environment Implementation Innovations.- Business Sustainability and Green Innovation in the SDGs Era.- Forest Landscape Sustainability.- Coastal and Marine Sustainability.- Sustainability of Raw Water, Rivers, Swamps, and Lakes.- The Indigenous and Village Peoples’ Lives Sustainability.- City and Urban Life Sustainability.- Sustainable Waste Management.- Energy Sustainability and Renewable Energy.- Tourism Sustainability.- Agriculture Development Sustainability.- Industrial Plants and Industrial Plantation Forests.- Infrastructure and Transportation Development Sustainability.- Climate Change Impacts on Environmental and Development.- Sustainable Environmental Health.- Sustainable Mining: Lightening the Load.- Environmental Program Funding.- Legislation and Environmental Law Enforcement.- Sustainable Environmental Management Monitoring and Research.