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- With poverty, hunger largely unaddressed before and during Covid-19, Indonesia’s new normal is still business as usual
With poverty, hunger largely unaddressed before and during Covid-19, Indonesia’s new normal is still business as usual
While many are blaming Covid-19 for causing disruptions in Indonesia’s food supply chains and access to nutrition, Solidaritas Perempuan’s Arieska Kurniawaty said that what the pandemic only did was to further expose the country’s already defective development policies that focused too much on economic growth but failed to ensure and even threatened the social well-being of its people.
With Indonesia already unable to address massive hunger and malnutrition even before Covid-19, it is highly likely that Southeast Asia’s most populous country will not be able to rise from the rut and may even push its people deeper into the poverty pit as it continues with its “business-as-usual” approach in handling its economic affairs amid the pandemic.
This is what Arieska Kurniawaty, program officer of the national executive board of the Jakarta-based Solidaritas Perempuan (Women’s Solidarity for Human Rights), foresees, pointing out that while Covid-19 continues to expose the major flaws in profit-driven economies, nothing much is changing in Indonesia’s food production and procurement as these remain tied with “the global food system hijacked by corporate power.”
“So this comes again ̶ profit for the corporations. The government tends to ignore the safety and health of its residents” as it “prioritizes the economy…” and “avoids the responsibility of ensuring the people’s food needs,” said Kurniawaty, during a June 26, 2020 webinar titled Food Producers Shall Not Go Hungry: Broken Globalised Food Systems and Covid-19 organized by the Asia Europe People’s Forum.
“Currently, we are transitioning into the new normal where there have been no signs of improvement. And civil society organizations, particularly social movements, think that our government is using this crisis to foster and expand their agenda being opposed by the people,” she said.
“If the government is doing everything like busines as usual, the crisis will still continue. Food producers will be left hungry,” added Kurniawaty.
Widening rich-poor gap despite continued economic growth
Despite high levels of economic growth before the onslaught of Covid-19 that made Indonesia the largest economy in Southeast Asia and the 16th in the world in terms of gross domestic product, wide gaps in wealth and income persisted, trapping millions of its people into chronic poverty, hunger, and malnutrition.
In September 2019, the Indonesian government placed its total number of poor people at 24.79 million as their incomes failed to reach the poverty line set at Rp 440,538 (roughly $32) per person per month or $1.05 per day. This was 880,000 (3.4 percent) lower compared to figures in September 2018, according to data from the Badan Pusat Statistik (Central Statistics Agency).
However, as pointed out by critics, the government-set poverty line or the estimated minimum level of income to be able to secure life necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter, was unrealistic and thus could have underestimated the extent of poverty in the country.
The current international poverty line is $1.90 per person per day or 81 percent higher than Indonesia's poverty line of $1.05.
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s monthly expenditure per capita in 2019 was reported at Rp 1,165,241. This is roughly equivalent to $84 or about $2.8 per person per day, which is 167 percent higher than the $1.05 per day poverty line set by the government.
Oxfam’s tax and inequality policy advisor Luke Gibson asserted that while economic growth had taken off in Indonesia since 2000, the gap between the rich and the poor had also widened.
“The number of billionaires increased from one in 2002 to 20 in 2016. They are all men. In 2016, the collective wealth of the richest four billionaires was $25bn, more than the total wealth of the bottom 40 percent of the population – about 100 million people,” noted Gibson in his 48-page briefing paper, Towards A More Equal Indonesia: How The Government Can Take Action To Close The Gap Between the Rich and the Rest, released in 2017.
“In just one day, the richest Indonesian man can earn from interest on his wealth over one thousand times more than what the poorest Indonesians spend on average on their basic needs for an entire year,” he added.
Malnutrition unaddressed, pandemic-related child deaths could be highest in Asia
This economic inequality has resulted in higher rates of health and social problems among millions of Indonesians, including childhood malnutrition.
Currently, over two million Indonesian children suffer from severe wasting or low weight for height, a type of acute malnutrition characterized by massive loss of body fat and muscle tissue that cause them to look elderly and extremely thin.
“Wasting in children is the life-threatening result of poor nutrient intake and/or disease,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Children suffering from wasting have weakened immunity, are susceptible to long term developmental delays, and face an increased risk of death, particularly when wasting is severe. These children require urgent feeding, treatment and care to survive.”
Also, about 1 in 3 Indonesian children under the age of 5 suffer from stunting or low height for age. The WHO says “children suffering from stunting may never attain their full possible height and their brains may never develop to their full cognitive potential.”
“These children begin their lives at a marked disadvantage: they face learning difficulties in school, earn less as adults, and face barriers to participation in their communities.”
Last June, the Unicef warned of a sharp rise in the number of malnourished children in Indonesia as the country reeled from disrupted food supply chains, income loss, and overburdened health facilities amid Covid-19.
“Covid-19 proves that we have to fight against malnutrition,” Achmad Yurianto, the disease control and prevention director general of Indonesia’s Health Ministry, said in June, following reports that hundreds of Indonesian children were believed to have died due to the pandemic.
In July, the situation turned for the worse when Indonesian Pediatric Society chairman Aman Bhakti Pulungan confirmed that the country had "recorded the greatest number of child deaths (from Covid-19) in Asean and even Asia.”
"As the pandemic is not yet over, Indonesia will likely have the highest rate of child deaths from Covid-19 in the world," he added.
Indonesia’s development policies already defective even before Covid-19
But while many are blaming Covid-19 for causing disruptions in Indonesia’s food supply chains and access to nutrition, Solidaritas Perempuan’s Kurniawaty said that what the pandemic only did was to further expose the country’s already defective development policies that focused too much on economic growth but failed to ensure and even threatened the social well-being of its people.
“There is the Omnibus Law for job creation, mining law, and some trade negotiations like RCEP. The government is still very reliant on growth economy and investment. Even though we come to realize how much we rely on farmers, fisherfolk, and other food producers to get our food at this time, there is really no concrete step from the government to secure our food,” she said.
Solidaritas Perempuan, among the members of the Civil Society Coalition for Economic Justice (MKE Coalition), is assailing the Indonesian government and its parliament’s continued push for the passage of the proposed Omnibus Law.
The coalition said the draft legislation, which seeks to create jobs and improve the investment climate in Indonesia by simplifying 82 existing laws hampering businesses, would “prioritize the interests of investors rather than the lives of Indonesian citizens.”
“The Covid-19 pandemic…should be a turning point not to return to the trade policy of ‘business as usual,’ and dependence on private investment must be corrected, particularly those related to health, food, and basic public services,” the coalition said in an April 2020 statement.
Also, Solidaritas Perempuan opposed the Indonesian parliament’s passage of a new mining law last May, which was signed by President Joki Widodo last June 10.
The law has extended the maximum size of traditional mining zones to 100 hectares, allowed mining activities in rivers and seas, and made mining permit extensions of up to 20 years automatic.
SP and other non-government organizations in Indonesia fear that the passage of the new mining law, which was allegedly done in haste and without public consultations, would further threaten the poor’s access to food and nutrition as bigger mining concessions would lead to more losses in productive cultivated land.
READ THIS PUBLICATION RELATED TO THE ISSUE: Hungry: Coal Mining and Food Security in Indonesia
RCEP: A threat to seed, food sovereignty
Moreover, Solidaritas Perempuan has joined civil society organization in the Asia Pacific in calling for a halt to secret trade negotiations on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a mega free trade agreement between 15 countries in the region, which includes Indonesia.
The organizations said RCEP could threaten farmers and indigenous people’s rights to seed and food sovereignty.
SP’s Kurniawaty said RCEP’s approval “will make things much worse for the 420 million small family farms that produce 80% of the region’s food.”
“At this critical time, we have come to realize how much we rely on farmers, peasants, fisherfolks, other food producers, our local market and shorter food distribution networks to get our food. It is not only a matter of trade negotiations, it’s a matter of people’s life and livelihoods,” she said during an online press conference held in June.
READ THIS PUBLICATION RELATED TO THE ISSUE: How RCEP Affects Food and Farmers