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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
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Book reviews
Etty Agoes , Iwan Gunawan , Aimee Dawis , Pierre van der Eng ,
Prema-chandra Athukorala & William L. Collier
To cite this article: Etty Agoes , Iwan Gunawan , Aimee Dawis , Pierre van der Eng , Prema-chandra Athukorala & William L. Collier (2011) Book reviews, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 47:3, 419-429, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2011.619055
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2011.619055
Published online: 16 Nov 2011.
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ISSN 0007-4918 print/ISSN 1472-7234 online/11/030419-11 DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2011.619055
BOOK REVIEWS
Robert Cribb and Michele Ford (eds) (2009) Indonesia Beyond the Water’s Edge: Managing an Archipelagic State, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS),
Singapore, pp. xv + 248. Paper: S$29.90/US$24.90; cloth: S$40.90/US$39.90.
This collection of essays examines how the world’s largest archipelagic state manages its territorial and jurisdictional rights – and obligations – over the sea.
Written by eminent Indonesian and Australian scholars, oficials and others, the contents are the product of the Australian National University’s 2008 Indonesia Update conference. Although published two years ago, the book remains a com
-prehensive source for understanding ocean management in Indonesia.
The contributions address subjects ranging from the 1957 Djuanda Declaration
establishing Indonesia as an archipelagic state, and the inclusion of part IV on archipelagic states in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to the dificulties Indonesia faces in trying to implement and beneit from UNCLOS. The book covers maritime boundaries; the development of archi
-pelagic principles in international law; the establishment of Indonesia’s archipe
-lagic sea-lanes; the extension of the outer limit of Indonesia’s continental shelf;
shipping and marine safety; law enforcement; and marine conservation.
The editors’ introduction offers historical and geographical perspectives on the
sea’s distinctive role in Indonesian life. Notwithstanding its long history of sea
-faring prowess, Indonesia, the authors suggest, needs to enhance its capacity to
master new technologies that would assist it in managing its seas. This empha-sis on technology may be somewhat misleading, because despite this weakness,
Indonesia’s record in developing a political regime to govern the sea is widely
considered impressive.
John Butcher describes Indonesia’s struggle to gain recognition as an archipe -lagic state, from the preparations for the Djuanda Declaration to the deliberations
at the irst and second UNCLOS. He traces the development of regulations gov -erning the waters of the archipelago from the Dutch Ordinance of 1939 (which he
cites as 1935) to Indonesia’s efforts outside UNCLOS, culminating in the inclusion of part IV in UNCLOS 1982.
No one is better qualiied to write about Indonesia’s maritime boundaries than Arif Havas Oegroseno, Indonesia’s principal negotiator for their delimitation. Lying between two continents and two oceans, Indonesia is bordered at sea by
10 neighbouring countries, and has concluded an impressive 17 boundary
agree-ments. Havas discusses Indonesia’s border policy, the consistently high policy
priority of border issues, and some contentious maritime border problems that remain.
Hasjim Djalal, a member of Indonesia’s UNCLOS delegation and still active
in law of the sea matters, examines how the interests of the archipelagic state in maintaining its sovereignty are reconciled with the right of all ships to pass
through designated archipelagic sea-lanes. He traces the designation of Indo
-nesia’s sea-lanes – the irst and probably the only cooperation to date between the International Maritime Organization and an archipelagic state in implementing the 1982 UNCLOS – and identiies outstanding issues.
Article 76 of UNCLOS 1982 provides the opportunity for any state to extend its continental shelf beyond 200 miles from its base points. I Made Andi Arsana and Clive Schoield examine Indonesia’s effort to do this, analysing its scientiic back
-ground and its beneits for Indonesia. At the time of the writing, Indonesia was still at the beginning of the submission process. It did not have to wait too long to
receive the recommendation of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental
Shelf that Indonesia’s irst and partial submission for an extended continental
shelf in northwest Sumatra be accepted.
David Ray analyses port sector reform, arguing that Indonesia’s port system does not yet perform well from the users’ perspective. In probably the irst lengthy
examination of the root causes of this problem, he discusses the inadequacy of port services, port security and private sector participation. Ray sees the shipping law of 2008 as providing the foundation for a radical transformation of the port governance system. However, this law is under review.
The meaning of ‘piracy’ has been debated by those who adhere to its legal
deinition in UNCLOS 1982 (art. 101), which includes only acts committed on the high seas or outside any state jurisdiction, and those who deine it more broadly
to encompass armed robbery at sea, a common form of maritime crime in the
Southeast Asian region, particularly in Indonesian waters. Bateman analyses the
most common types and locations of piracy events, efforts made to combat piracy, and barriers to enforcement. He concludes by arguing that although ships
pass-ing through Indonesian waters are still vulnerable to attack, high-value trafic is
normally not the target.
Maritime law enforcement remains complex because of the large number of institutions with responsibility for different aspects of the use of the sea. Djoko Sumaryono discusses an attempt to overcome this problem, outlining the struc-ture and goals of Bakorkamla, the Maritime Security Coordinating Board.
Erwin Rosmali explores marine safety for national and international shipping
in Indonesian waters. He describes ‘the tragic catalogue of major maritime dis
-asters’ between 1981 and 2006, and Indonesia’s efforts to change its reputation
as a ‘black area’ for international transport. The establishment of a Directorate of Marine Safety within the Ministry of Transport is a mark of the seriousness of these efforts.
A central issue in marine governance is protection of the marine environment. Rili Djohani uses the Komodo National Park as a case study of major changes
in the governance of Indonesia’s marine protected areas, and of their collabora
-tive management by government, the public, NGOs and foreign and international agencies. Collaborative management has helped Indonesia to protect this national
park from various destructive practices and to monitor its coral reef ecosystems.
Sarah Waddell examines Indonesia’s response to the rising challenge of pro
-viding legal protection for the Indonesian coastal and marine environment. She
outlines the status of this environment and summarises existing laws and
regula-tions, analysing three important legal products: the Environmental Management Acts of 1982 and 1997; the reformed isheries law of 2004; and the 2007 Coastal and Small Island Management Law.
James Fox’s chapter, ’Legal and illegal Indonesian ishing in Australian waters’, traces the four-decade maritime relationship between Indonesia and Australia since the arrangements agreed for traditional ishing in 1974. He goes on to ana
-lyse the development of illegal ishing outside this area across a broad front along
the northern coast of Australia, and the problems it has caused for Australian
isheries management.
In the inal chapter, Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons use a case study of the Riau Islands to highlight issues ‘beyond the water’s edge’, examining how Indonesians
in border areas see their relationship with the state they legally belong to, given their close connections with their neighbours across the sea.
Etty Agoes
Indonesian Center for the Law of the Sea (ICLOS); Padjadjaran University, Bandung
© 2011 Etty Agoes
Iwan J. Azis, Lydia M. Napitupulu, Arianto A. Patunru and Budy P.
Resosudarmo (2010) Pembangunan Berkelanjutan: Peran dan Kontribusi Emil Salim [Sustainable Development: The Role and Contribution of Emil Salim],
KPG (Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia), Jakarta, pp. xviii + 558. Rp 120,000.
This book is a gift to Professor Emil Salim (Pak Emil), who celebrated his 80th
birthday on 8 June 2010. It is a collection of articles written by the students (both at school and in life) of Pak Emil. The 28 chapters are arranged in ive sections.
The irst section introduces some of the basic concepts of sustainable develop
-ment, mainly from the perspective of an economist. It presents a good summary
of concepts such as sustainable development, environmental accounting and
externalities, and how they are taught in Indonesian higher education institu -tions. The contributors write in popular language, which makes this section an easy reference on sustainable development for lay people. Contributors include
Indonesia’s Vice President Boediono, members of the editorial team and other
noted economists such as M. Arsjad Anwar and Arianto Patunru.
Three of the remaining sections bring together papers on the themes of insti-tutions; natural resources and the environment; and population and health. The section on institutions contains eight chapters, covering the notion of a ‘greener constitution’; the environmental and sustainable development movement; climate change negotiations and policies; sustainable development policy and its inter-nalisation into government policy; environmental impact controls; environmental
impact assessment; corporate social responsibility; and conlicts between plan -ning and the environment. Contributors include business leader Noke Kiroyan.
The 12 chapters on natural resources and the environment explore ways of preserving biodiversity; forest management and emissions reduction, including
REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation); marine ecosystems; the role of renewable energy sources in energy conservation;
envi-ronmental aspects of oil and gas extraction; efforts to resolve conlicts between
mining and public welfare; and strategies and policies for adaptation to climate change. One chapter deals with Emil Salim’s ideas on natural resource planning and management and their implementation. This section ends with a chapter by the late Hadi Soesastro, which deals with international climate change negotia-tions.
The section on population and health includes chapters on health, on demo-graphic transition, and on urbanisation, spatial planning and sustainable devel-opment. The last section of the book, entitled ‘Emil Salim’, brings together many interesting stories that Pak Emil used to tell during his lectures. Even those who have not attended his classes but have listened to his public lectures may recog-nise some of Pak Emil’s words in this chronicle.
The contributors to this book have clearly sat together a number of times before preparing their individual or co-authored articles. Although each of them writes on a specialised professional subject, it is interesting that, overall, the chapters
relect the various efforts that Pak Emil championed as a senior state oficial, as a professor and as one of the world’s leading environmental intellectuals. In the context of Indonesia’s environment today, the book clearly leaves the impression
that the implementation of sustainable development remains a challenge. The various articles highlight the complexity of the social, economic and political set-tings, and these settings in turn illustrate that the principle of internalising nega-tive externalities is in practice a lot more complex than that suggested in the cost equation.
What is unfortunately missing among the chapters is the perspective of risk from the impact of unsustainable development practices. The many disasters
that Indonesia has experienced in recent times are in fact partly the result of
development that has not accounted for negative externalities. Massive
defor-estation triggering lood, drought and landslides, as well as poor management of
human settlement, have exacerbated the impact of even the slightest of extreme natural events. The costs of these disaster risks may well represent the ‘missing negative externalities’ that were ignored in the cost equation for past develop-ment activities.
This book is essential reading not only for students of environmental science,
but also for all those concerned with the state of Indonesia’s environment. It gives
readers an opportunity to appreciate the fact that Pak Emil, a great environmental thinker of our time and a consistent advocate of sustainable development, was
born as an Indonesian. It should motivate young readers to acknowledge that the
challenge now falls to them to participate in and continue Pak Emil’s inspiring efforts to turn sustainable development into a simple practical reality. Risk man-agement, impact investing and green growth should be part of the new vocabu-lary that enriches the concept of sustainable development.
Iwan Gunawan
World Bank, Jakarta
© 2011 Iwan Gunawan
Marleen Dieleman, Juliette Koning and Peter Post (eds) (2011)
Chinese Indonesians and Regime Change, Brill, Leiden,
pp. xiii + 232. Cloth: €97.00/US$137.00.
Indonesian history records revolutions followed by regime changes that have trig -gered profound socio-cultural effects. Members of a particular minority group, the
Chinese of Indonesia, have often been portrayed as victims in the violent clashes that erupted during each revolution. The literature on the Chinese Indonesians has also emphasised their elite entrepreneur status and their economic inluence.
This new book, edited by Marleen Dieleman, Juliette Koning and Peter Post,
pos-tulates that Chinese Indonesians are not mere victims but are active agents of
change during times of social and economic turbulence.
In nine chapters, this volume traces the role of Chinese Indonesians in ‘shap
-ing, moderat-ing, or stimulating social change in Indonesia’ (p. 8). The three edi -tors open the book by offering an alternative perspective on the study of Chinese
Indonesians and regime change. First, they treat Chinese Indonesians as ‘insiders’ instead of ‘bystanders’, and study how they inluence and respond to historical
events, instead of looking at them as victims whose fate is determined by those events (p. 15). Second, they argue that their agency-centred approach allows them to transcend conceptual categories such as state, culture and migrant. A mix of perspectives from history, anthropology, sociology and business studies may be presented and analysed through this alternative conceptual lens.
The rest of the book is divided into three parts. The irst deals with Chineseness during and after the New Order period. In this section, contributions by Juliette
Koning, Nobuhiro Aizawa and Andreas Susanto discuss small business owners and their conversion to charismatic Christiantity; the role of the Ministry of Home Affairs in implementing the assimilation policy of Soeharto’s New Order govern-ment; and the various responses of Yogyakarta Chinese to the assimilation policy.
The second section focuses on law in the Dutch East Indies. The essay by
Nobuto Yamamoto gives detailed attention to the prominent role that Chinese–
Indonesian journalists played in the nationalist movement. Examining a 1909 law
suit in which Loa Joe Djin sought redress for a slur on his reputation caused by
what he saw as a wrongful verdict pronounced in a deicient criminal procedure, Patricia Tjiook-Liem shows how this case set off an overhaul of the East Indies
justice system.
The inal part of the book looks at Chinese business responses to regime change, and includes essays that would particularly engage readers interested in Indo -nesia’s economy and business. Alexander Claver’s chapter, for example, outlines the clever marketing strategies employed by the Margo Redjo coffee company in Semarang, Central Java, to overcome a management crisis arising from global economic turmoil in the 1930s. Peter Post’s chapter clearly shows how one of the
biggest ethnic Chinese conglomerates that existed in Indonesia between 1931 and
1950, the Oei Tiong Ham Concern, adapted to enforced institutional changes. Marleen Dieleman’s case study, which concludes the book, centres on another
large conglomerate, the Salim Group, and analyses how a successful family irm
progressively outgrows ‘narrow networks drawing from the family, the ethnic group, and domestic business and family settings’ (p. 222).
By offering a multi-layered approach, this book successfully contributes a new
perspective that stresses the agency of Chinese Indonesians. Close examination of
the day-to-day realities of this group allows readers to understand how they have overcome immense obstacles during times of adversity. The book is a worthy
con-tribution to the complex study of this minority group in Indonesia.
Aimee Dawis
University of Indonesia, Jakarta
© 2011 Aimee Dawis
David Dawe (ed.) (2010) The Rice Crisis: Markets, Policies and Food Secu-rity. Earthscan, London and Washington DC. Cloth: £60.00.
The tripling of international rice prices between October 2007 and May 2008 took many by surprise. Prices had been relatively stable until then, and there was no sudden increase in global rice consumption or sudden shortage of supplies in international markets.
As a major rice importer and a country that had previously used import bans
to support the domestic rice price, Indonesia faced the dilemma of whether to
use an export ban to shield domestic consumers from exorbitant rice prices in international markets. As a contribution to this debate, BIES published a special
issue in April 2008 on rice policy. Going against the prevailing view, contributors argued that the growth rate of Indonesia’s rice production would slow, but that
the country could continue to trust the global rice market to supply its needs dur-ing periods of production shortfall.
When international rice prices dropped later in 2008 and then stabilised – albeit at double the pre-October 2007 level – the issue quickly disappeared from public view, and questions about the causes of the price spike and the need for
govern-ment intervention in rice markets remained largely unanswered. In hindsight, the
BIES authors were right. Indonesia imposed a temporary qualiied export ban
to calm expectations about future price rises. During the rest of 2008 it achieved
a high rate of self-suficiency in rice, and has not since suffered any rice supply
shortages that could not be met with imports.
What then was the 2008 rice crisis all about? This book is a post-mortem on the
crisis, and the outcome of a workshop in Thailand in February 2009 sponsored by
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The workshop dis -cussions reached a consensus that government policies, rather than markets, were crucial to understanding the rice price hike. This raised the question of what pol-icy improvements could be made to avoid a similar episode in the future. Those discussions inform the 17 chapters of the book. Two of the 2008 BIES authors have
a prominent role: David Dawe of the FAO edited the book, and he and C. Peter
Timmer each contributed to three chapters. Twelve chapters focus on country and region experiences, four put the episode of high rice prices in context, and Dawe’s concluding chapter considers whether a future rice crisis can be prevented.
The chapter on Indonesia by Agus Saifullah of Bulog explains that the rice crisis caused but a ripple in Indonesia. Domestic rice prices remained broadly
stable and Indonesia did not change its policies substantially, except to increase
the amount of subsidised rice distributed to poor families under the Raskin (Rice for the Poor) scheme, and the amount of rice stockpiled for emergency and price
stabilisation purposes. We know that Indonesia weathered the crisis with relative
ease, in part because it experienced a bumper rice crop that reduced rice imports from 1.4 million tonnes in 2007 to 0.3 million in 2008. The crop was harvested
mainly during the months when international prices peaked, and the qualiied
export ban prevented rice exports from pushing up domestic prices.
The chapters in the book underline the following consensus on the 2008 rice
cri-sis. It is still unclear why the rice price started to increase well before the prices of
maize and wheat, but there is little doubt that the spike in maize and wheat prices
was due to inancial speculation, which then spilled over into the international rice
market. The existence of well-developed futures markets and the fact that wheat and maize are widely traded helped to avert major supply shortages for these
commodities. In contrast, rice is thinly traded in global markets and its futures
market is under-developed. The effects of these two factors were exacerbated by
export bans imposed by major exporters India and Vietnam, by Thailand’s con -sideration of an export ban, and by panic buying by major rice importing coun-tries that feared supply shortages. Together, these aspects of national stabilisation policies heightened uncertainty in the rice market. This encouraged hoarding, speculation and further panic buying, and caused rice prices to increase faster than those of wheat and maize.
Dawe’s concluding chapter is cautious about what lessons to draw from the crisis. A simplistic response would be to seek consensus between rice produc-ing and consumproduc-ing countries to leave price settproduc-ing to the international rice mar-ket, and strengthen the institutions that support it. But that ignores the political reality that Asian governments see the management of rice price volatility as an important public policy matter. The 2008 experience may have reinforced that perception, if not the resolve of some governments to reduce dependence on the international rice market. Seeking middle ground, Dawe sums up the message of the book’s contributors by concluding that governments should temper their use of trade policy; allow markets to complement current national safety net policies that focus on poor consumers and producers; and improve domestic rice price stabilisation policies to avoid exacerbating the uncertainty that contributes to hoarding and panic buying.
Pierre van der Eng
ANU
© 2011 Pierre van der Eng
John Malcolm Dowling and Pradumna Bickram Rana (2010)
Asia and the Global Economic Crisis: Challenges in a Financially Integrated World,
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. xii + 271. Cloth: £65.00.
The past two years have seen a proliferation of books on the global inancial cri
-sis (GFC), but most have focused on its origin in the US, its propagation to other
developed countries, and debate in these countries about policy responses. This
book, by two eminent Asian economists, deserves attention as the irst attempt to examine the GFC’s impact on countries in Asia, and the policy challenges these
countries face in reshaping development strategies in the context of the crisis-propelled emphasis on rebalancing the world economy. The book breaks little new ground, but by bringing together relevant material from scattered sources it makes a valuable contribution to the literature on Asian economies and sets the stage for further research.
Two background chapters (2 and 4) cover the anatomy of the crisis in the US,
its spread to the other industrial countries, and policy responses in these
coun-tries. These well-written chapters are by far the best in the book. In addition to
providing the context for examining the Asia experiences, they together offer an
excellent primer on the GFC. The rest of the book deals with the spread of the
crisis to Asia; its impact on growth and poverty; crisis management strategies; implications for development strategy, with a focus on growth re-balancing; the economic outlook for the countries in the region in the aftermath of the crisis; and regional and global initiatives for crisis prevention and impact mitigation. These chapters contain a wealth of information, but unfortunately the authors have not used this material to develop a coherent analytical narrative, encom-passing, in that order, the initial economic conditions (the state of vulnerability);
the nature and channels of transmission of GFC-propelled external shocks; policy
responses and their effectiveness; and the implications for the future growth tra-jectory and policy directions. A grouping of countries based on economic size and stage of development is presented in chapter 5; the book’s quality and readability
would have been signiicantly improved by the use of this country grouping as
the organising framework for the material presented in other chapters.
Chapter 3 begins by identifying four channels through which the GFC affected the Asian economies: deterioration of bank balance sheets owing to the collapse of the sub-prime market; capital outlow; contraction of export demand; and decline
in remittances by foreign workers. However, there is no discussion of the highly policy-relevant issue of the relative importance of these channels in the context of
this crisis. According to what I have read elsewhere, the irst two channels played a less signiicant role in the GFC than in the Asian inancial crisis (AFC) of 1997–98. Thanks to inancial sector reforms and the accumulation of foreign reserves (as a
cushion against future capital account crises) as part of the policy response to the
AFC, Asian economies were in a much better position to face the GFC. Its impact
on them was primarily through the export channel, and this certainly made the management of the crisis using conventional macroeconomic policy tools much more effective than it had been in the AFC. Contrary to the authors’ claim, there
is no evidence to suggest that the GFC had a noticeable impact on remittance inlows to Asian countries.
Many sections in chapter 5 (the impact of the global crisis on Asia), chapter 6
(policy response) and chapter 10 (individual country responses and prospects) overlap. The discussion of poverty in chapter 9 sits on its own without any explicit links to the theme of the book. Chapter 8 on global rebalancing recom-mends stimulation of domestic demand (as a means of reducing dependence on
external trade) as a ‘one-size-its-all’ policy for Asian countries, regardless of their
economic size and ‘structural’ dependence on foreign trade. The discussion of
economic integration in Asia (chapter 11) is rather lopsided: the authors’ infer
-ence that the GFC has further strengthened the case for Asian regionalism is based
entirely on a selective citation of the works of the pro-regionalism camp. A con-spicuous omission here and elsewhere in the book is discussion of the pivotal role played by global production sharing in the economic dynamism of rapidly grow-ing Asian economies. This emerggrow-ing form of international specialisation makes a strong case for a global rather than a regional approach to trade and investment
policy making. It is doubtful whether trade liberalisation at the regional level is
effective in achieving regional self-reliance in a context where global production networks are rapidly expanding, seamlessly encompassing many industries and countries.
At the individual country level, the authors note in several places that the
impact of the GFC was weaker in Indonesia than in the other major Asian econo
-mies because Indonesia was less well integrated with the global economy. This
observation is factually correct in relation to the short-term effect of this external
shock. However, it needs to be qualiied by noting the widely acknowledged fact
that this relatively low degree of global economic integration is also a part of the
explanation for Indonesia’s relatively poor growth and development record in the
regional context.
Prema-chandra Athukorala
ANU
© 2011 Prema-chandra Athukorala
Matthew Clarke, Ismet Fanany and Sue Kenny (eds) (2010) Post-Disaster Reconstruction: Lessons from Aceh,
Earthscan, London, pp. 288. Cloth: £60.00.
This book examines, largely from an NGO perspective, the reconstruction phase in Aceh after the tsunami. It should be required reading for anyone interested in Aceh or in post-disaster reconstruction. This review is informed by the indings
of a 2007–08 World Bank evaluation study led by the reviewer – the Community-Based Settlement Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD) – which conducted interview surveys and housing quality
examinations in 31 villages and held focus group discussions with oficials at all
levels of government, especially the district and village.
Unfortunately, the book under review gives little information about the authors,
their roles in Aceh or the projects they worked on. The research was conducted almost entirely in rural villages rather than urban areas. None of the studies was
carried out in Banda Aceh, where the destruction and loss of life was probably highest. Notwithstanding these gaps, the chapters are clearly documented, with copious footnotes.
Several chapters mention competition among NGOs, which, according to
chapter 8 by Fuad Mardha on the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for
Aceh and NIAS (BRR), included 561 international organisations. Our World Bank evaluation study showed that around 140 NGOs sought to be involved in hous
-ing reconstruction. At least dur-ing the irst year or two, only one NGO could operate per village; once the village leader had signed an MOU with an NGO, no other NGO or international organisation could work in that village. Often NGOs would sign an MOU with a village before having secured the necessary exper -tise or funds, and would desert the village if they could not fund the work. Yet the village was then prevented for a time from seeking assistance from another
organisation. As chapter 4 by Sue Kenny states (p. 86), ‘In some cases external aid
agencies were seen to be competing with one another to claim their territory for
housing development’. Our study found that one international NGO had paid
the village leader to refuse to allow other organisations to operate in the village.
Chapter 5 by Ismet Fanany states (p. 115) that housing was often poorly con -structed and lacked access to sewerage and electricity. Our study found that some local building contractors used salty water in the cement, which created very
low-quality construction: one could dig a hole with one’s hands through the loor of
some houses. Sometimes, contractors would replace the top-quality wood sup-plied for a project with lower-quality timber.
In most of the 18 villages mentioned in chapter 6, women’s participation is said
to be limited. Yet our study found that in several of the urban villages women
challenged the men, with one strongly contradicting the local police oficer. A
factor limiting women’s participation was their reluctance to attend meetings at night.
Chapter 2 on the role of Islamic law (syariah) in post-tsunami reconstruction (by Michelle Ann Miller) is based almost entirely on published sources and just three interviews – with a village leader, the provincial governor and the NAD syariah
agency director (p. 54). One wonders whether this is suficient to determine the
role of syariah in the reconstruction. In our studies of 31 villages, we never encoun -tered cases of religion affecting the reconstruction.
The case of Lampuuk clearly demonstrates that supervision of housing con-tractors is crucial to ensuring quality. Following complaints about housing quality from locals, the Turkish Red Cross, which had funded the work, forced the
con-tractor to build the houses to the required speciications. Our focus group discus -sions in Banda Aceh revealed that the Turkish Red Cross was considered the best
reconstruction NGO. It was one of the irst to arrive after the tsunami and imme -diately began distributing food. As chapter 5 states, ‘The experience of Lampuuk suggests a fourth lesson, that donors should participate in the disbursement of aid, even when work to be done is undertaken by contractors or other organisa-tions’. Our study, too, found this to be crucial.
In chapter 3, ‘Political Reconstruction in Aceh’, Damien Kingsbury discusses the democratisation of GAM (the Free Aceh Movement) and how important its
role was in the reconstruction of the ‘political and, consequently, social landscape
of Aceh …’ (p. 75). In chapter 6, ‘Village Government in Aceh, Three Years after
the Tsunami’, Craig Thorburn states that: ‘Those villages that had successfully incorporated ex-GAM combatants or commanders into village government and programme management structures were reaping prodigious beneits in terms
of community unity, motivation and overall effectiveness of reconstruction pro-grams’ (p. 150). Our study found that many village leaders were members of
GAM and several had returned from Malaysia. They were articulate, concerned
about the reconstruction of their villages and apparently responsive to the con-cerns of villagers.
Suellen Murray (chapter 7) states that ‘[a] problem both caused and com-pounded by the poor experience or skills of some staff … was the high turnover which in turn led to considerable instability and incoherence in the international partnership’s tsunami response’. Our study found that one major international
donor with a housing assistance project had its team leader replaced ive times in
two years. All were foreigners.
Chapter 8 on the BRR contains an unfortunate error. It states that: ‘Land owner -ship … is impeding the construction of houses, and the problem of land release still requires the full attention of the National Defence Agency (Badan
Perta-hanan Nasional) at the central as well as the regional level.’ It is the National Land
Agency (Badan Pertanahan Nasional) that is responsible for land release, not the National Defence Agency (Badan Pertahanan Nasional). One of its programs was the joint (husband and wife) titling of land ownership.
In the concluding chapter, ‘Lessons from Aceh’, Matthew Clarke and Sue Kenny rightly observe that ‘[t]he overarching lesson that this volume identiies
is that reconstruction is not a one-dimensional process. Reconstruction must refer to multiple aspects, involve multiple players and allow for multiple perspectives and experiences’. The authors list 11 lessons from the Aceh reconstruction that are simple but powerful.
It would be good to see a follow-up volume several years from now that
examines whether economic, social and governmental progress has followed the
departure of the 561 international organisations.
William L. Collier
Consultant, Jakarta
© 2011 William L. Collier
