Solusi Atasi Kemiskinan

Menghijaukan Hutan, Menyekolahkan Anak...

Terlalu banyak tokoh dan pejabat bicara kemiskinan dari dulu sampai sekarang. Lebih-lebih menjelang pemilihan umum. Kemiskinan itu memang sebuah kenyataan, tersuruk di desa-desa daerah pedalaman. Akan tetapi, kepedulian tentu tak sebatas wacana. Perlu dicermati apa akar persoalannya dan lalu bagaimana solusinya?

Menyadari persoalan kemiskinan akan berentet ke persoalan kurang gizi dan gizi buruk, angka tidak sekolah atau putus sekolah, maka masa depan bangsa adalah taruhannya. Pemerintah mungkin sudah berupaya keras untuk menanggulangi kemiskinan warganya, tetapi kadang tidak tuntas. Serba terbatas. Karena itu, tidak jarang yang menjadi perhatian hanya yang dekat, yang mudah terlihat, agar dinilai telah berbuat.

Masyarakat di daerah pedalaman? Bisa ditanya, apakah mereka pernah dikunjungi dan diketahui kondisinya oleh pemerintah daerah setempat? Jawabannya: Tidak pernah. Atau kalau pernah, dikunjungi sekali setahun. Begitulah kenyataan ketika Kompas berkunjung ke desa-desa di Kecamatan Sekayam, Kabupaten Sekadau dan Kecamatan Balai Batangtarang, Kabupaten Sanggau, Provinsi Kalimantan Barat, Desember lalu.

Soal kondisi hutan Kalimantan Barat yang rusak parah bukan isapan jempol. Mungkin ini salah satu akar persoalan kemiskinan itu. Karena itu, sejalan dengan semakin gencarnya negara-negara maju menyuarakan isu pemanasan global, Indonesia pun belakangan gencar menghijaukan kembali hutan-hutan dan lahan tidur.

”Untuk membantu pemerintah dan dunia mewujudkan hijaunya kembali hutan kita, World Vision Indonesia bekerja sama dengan Wahana Visi Indonesia Area Development Program (ADP) Sanggau sejak tahun 2002 memfasilitasi masyarakat pedalaman untuk membudidayakan karet,” kata Marketing Public Relation Manager World Vision Indonesia John Nelwan.

Berdasarkan hasil evaluasi World Vision Indonesia, ada beberapa kerentanan utama dalam masyarakat, yaitu pendidikan rendah, yang ditunjukkan 3,5 persen tidak bersekolah, sedangkan 41,8 persen hanya menempuh pendidikan sekolah dasar. Angka kematian anak bawah lima tahun (balita) 39 per 1.000, masih cukup tinggi. Di wilayah program, 12,05 persen keluarga hidup di bawah garis kemiskinan.

John Nelwan mengatakan, berdasarkan hasil pengamatan di lapangan, hutan dibabat (sebagian kecil) oleh masyarakat untuk berladang lalu ditanami padi yang ditumpangsarikan dengan menanam karet varietas lokal yang kemudian ditinggalkan. Sistem pertanian masih tradisional.

”Dari situ timbul pemikiran bagaimana komoditas karet yang telah lama menjadi sumber pendapatan utama bagi masyarakat pedalaman bisa ditingkatkan. Dengan hasil yang baik, kesejahteraan meningkat. Mereka pada akhirnya akan mampu menyekolahkan anak-anaknya,” ujarnya menjelaskan.

Dibekali pelatihan
Kelompok-kelompok masyarakat di Kecamatan Tayan Hilir, Balai Batangtarang, dan Nanga Mahap mengakui mendapat pelatihan budidaya tanaman karet dan bantuan bibit karet unggul dari World Vision Indonesia sejak tahun 2002.
”Jika selama ini bertanam karet masih tradisional, pascapelatihan dari lembaga kemanusiaan World Vision Indonesia budidaya tanaman karet menjadi lebih baik,” kata Husein, petani karet di Kecamatan Balai Batangtarang, Kabupaten Sanggau.

Bermula dari 26 keluarga di Kecamatan Tayan Hilir (2002) dengan 11.650 batang karet yang ditanam, hingga tahun 2007 sudah 2.009 keluarga yang dilatih. Mereka tersebar di Kecamatan Tayan Hilir, Sekayam, Batangtarang, dan Nanga Mahap dengan jumlah karet yang ditanam 29.025 batang. Setiap keluarga memiliki sedikitnya satu hektar kebun karet unggul.

Menurut John Nelwan, World Vision Indonesia hanya mampu memberikan bibit untuk lahan seluas 0,5 hektar per keluarga atau sekitar 250 batang bibit karet unggul. Untuk kebutuhan bibit lainnya diharapkan dipenuhi oleh petani yang tergabung dalam Kelompok Swadaya Masyarakat (KSM) dengan cara mempraktikkan pelatihan, seperti melalui okulasi.

”Selain menumbuhkan kemandirian juga untuk menjaga kemurnian dan mutu bibit karet unggul tersebut. Bibit unggul, yaitu biji karet varietas PB260 untuk tegakan (batang bawah), didatangkan dari Pusat Penelitian Karet Sungai Putih Medan, Sumatera Utara,” kata Manager ADP Sanggau I Made Sukariata.

Selain berbagai pelatihan, dalam program itu World Vision Indonesia dan Wahana Visi Indonesia juga mengadakan pendampingan. Mereka telah mempunyai fasilitator untuk melakukan pembinaan di empat kecamatan wilayah layanan ADP Sanggau.

Penghasilan lumayan
Berdasarkan pengamatan di lokasi kebun karet masyarakat di Tayan Hilir, bibit karet yang ditanam tahun 2002 dan 2003 telah mencapai usia siap panen atau sadap. Tanaman karet usia empat tahun sudah dapat disadap.

”Hasil sadap 111 batang dapat menghasilkan 3,5 kilogram getah karet kering. Hasilnya lebih banyak dibandingkan dengan karet bukan bibit unggul yang setiap 214 batang yang disadap menghasilkan sekitar 3,5 kilogram getah karet kering,” kata Miki, seorang ibu yang ditemui ketika tengah memanen karet di Tayan Hilir.

Petani lainnya, Karim dan Aukar, menjelaskan, dari lahan seluas satu hektar (500 batang), lateks (karet) yang didapat 25-30 kg per pagi dengan lama pengerjaan 5 jam. Dengan asumsi rata-rata 25 kg dikalikan harga karet saat itu Rp 7.000 per kg, masyarakat setiap pagi memperoleh hasil Rp 175.000. Terdapat kenaikan sekitar 80 persen pendapatan masyarakat apabila dibandingkan dengan membudidayakan karet secara tradisional.

”Hasil dari cara tradisional 2-3 kg per pagi. Penorehan biasanya dilakukan pada pagi hari saja,” ungkap Karim.
I Made Sukariata menegaskan, dengan hasil bertanam karet, masyarakat miskin yang tadinya tidak bisa menyekolahkan anak, sejak tiga tahun terakhir telah terbukti mampu menyekolahkan anak. Tanaman karet telah menjadi andalan utama untuk menyekolahkan anak.

”Bahkan, bagi anak SLTA yang sekolahnya dekat perkampungan, sebelum sekolah jika masuk siang anak-anak menyadap karet dulu. Anak-anak yang sekolah harus meninggalkan kampung. Jika libur, mereka menoreh (menyadap) karet agar dapat biaya sekolah,” katanya.

Program pengembangan masyarakat jangka panjang (ADP) Sanggau di Kabupaten Sekadau dan Sanggau berakhir pada tahun 2011. Total populasi yang menjadi target program World Vision Indonesia adalah 75.022 orang di Sanggau dan 24.726 orang di Sekadau. Program mencakup bidang pendidikan, kesehatan, pembangunan prasarana dasar, pemberdayaan ekonomi masyarakat, serta pengorganisasian masyarakat untuk mengelola sumber daya dan meningkatkan kesejahteraan.

Pola World Vision Indonesia membantu masyarakat miskin di daerah-daerah pedalaman Kalimantan Barat (dan 722 desa lainnya di 123 kecamatan, 34 kabupaten, dan 9 provinsi lainnya di seluruh Indonesia) untuk memerangi kemiskinan dan meningkatkan kualitas hidup manusia. Walau sepi dari publikasi, hal itu patut dan pantas diapresiasi. (YURNALDI)

Sumber: Kompas, 3 Februari 2009

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Environmental Crisis, Democracy and Morality

By Yansen

The world will celebrate World Environmental Day on June 5. This day highlights the importance of conserving our environment for the future of this planet. The increased awareness of global environmental challenges is a positive signal toward better action to prevent environmental damage.

Do we really care about the environment? And are we responding adequately to environmental problems including climate change and natural disasters?

Climate change has undeniably become a major environmental issue today. After the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it took people more than a decade to wake up to the certainty of climate change. Global campaigns on climate change and its possible impacts have increased people's awareness of the issue. Today, more people believe that severe droughts in many parts of the world are the direct impact of the climate changes.

Alterations to climate patterns has led to many natural catastrophes. Australia, for example, is aware of the need to react adequately to climate change given the future of the country's water supply is threatened.

"Climate change is the most severe problem we face today, more serious than the threat of terrorism", said David King, a leading UK scientist.

About 2,300 scientists, in the first section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which was released in February 2007, agreed that there had been severe changes to the environment compared to the report in 2001 and that the world must respond immediately. However, this is not the only problem. A lack of disaster management in many countries, including Indonesia, has made us unable to prevent huge devastation caused by natural disasters. The condition is worsened still by politics.

Why politics? Recently, the Myanmar military junta failed to anticipate Cyclone Nargis' impact. It is believed that the Myanmar authority was in a state of denial and, therefore, did not take any preemptive actions before the cyclone hit. The junta then rejected international hands offering help. The death toll increased because the post-disaster response was inadequate. It shows that dictatorships fail to save its citizens from tragedies.

Authoritarian governments also have suffered environmental abuses. The Chernobyl disaster is a leading example of environmental abuse by the ambitious agenda of an authoritarian government, the Soviet Union. Indonesia's repressive New Order regime also had a bad record of environmental management, some of which are still problems now.

David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, however, in Climate Challenges and the Failure of Democracy (2007), insist that liberal democracy has also failed to conserve and nurture better future environments. Liberal democracy even triggers worse environmental conditions than caused by dictatorships. Is this true?

Democracy has two fundamental values: Individual freedom and liberalism. Each person is free to choose to do whatever they want. These values are then reflected by the market and capitalism. The development of the market and capitalism has caused the world to grow rapidly.

The market has turned into market fundamentalism, says Johan Galtung. With capitalism, the market is only for capitalists. The market is only aimed to feed most people in democratic welfare societies. Hence, there is no global justice. A lack of access to the market has caused millions of people to live in poverty and around 100,000 people to die every day due to famine.

Democracy offers freedom, but what is missing is collective responsibility, argues Shearman and Smith. This freedom has to be defended. Threats to the individual freedoms and welfare enjoyed by democratic states, even though they are sometimes ambiguous, should be dismissed. Things that are good for the rest of the world, but not good enough for developed democratic countries must be refused.

This is the reason why the United States declines to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Democracy is also manipulated as mechanism for powerful nations to control the world. Building a democratic Iraq was used as an excuse to invade that country, which has caused huge devastation including environmental damage. We then see liberal democracy metamorphoses, slowly but surely, to authoritarianism, which potentially abuses power and the environment.

It is true that poverty has led to environmental destruction. This is the story of the third world. Poor people, for example, cut down the forest and cause forest degradation. The wealthy, nevertheless, causes more problems to the environment. More resources are needed to supply the demand of wealthy people.

The ecological footprints of people in welfare democratic societies need more resources than they have. These ecological deficits are filled from outside their countries, that is, from developing countries. More reserves are exploited in the third world just to meet this demand.

If poverty causes localized environmental destruction, wealth has global impacts. Consequently, poor countries are in a dilemmatic position. They face environmental destruction due to poverty on the one hand and they suffer from the indirect impacts of supplying the developed countries' demand on the other hand.

This condition is not getting better as consumption becomes higher. People consume more than they need.

In short, this global imbalance is not only causing global poverty, but also environmental degradation. Therefore, we need a new morality toward the environment.

We have to build collective responsibility to save our earth. We have to nurture global consciousness and encourage global justice. We have to reassert control over the market and capitalism. Politics should not be viewed as who gets what share of the pie, but about how and what the power is to be used. Politics and power have to be used to foster global justice.

Finally, we have to ask ourselves: are we really ready to think more about our future? This must begin with the individual. Without collective consciousness and responsibility, our hope for a better future for the earth will remain a dream. Are you ready?

The writer is a lecturer at the School of Forestry, University of Bengkulu, and a doctoral candidate at James Cook University, Australia. He can be reached at yansen.yansen@jcu.edu.au. Source: The Jakartapost, June 6, 2008.

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