Natural vs Intellectual

Natural Resources vs Intellectual Resources

A basic understanding on shaping Indonesia for better future

Andi P Rahim

January, 2010

The declining quality of the earth

Speaking at a side event of international climate talks in Copenhagen on December 16, 2009 on the theme “International Cooperation on Technology Transfer: Time for Action,” WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Director General Mr. Francis Gurry said Intellectual property (IP), has an important role to play in technology policy - encouraging investment in the creation of environment - friendly technologies and their rapid dissemination are major policy objectives to which priority must be given. In both cases, the IP system, and in particular patents, are fundamentally important in that they provide a stimulus for investment in green innovation and contribute to a rapid – and global – diffusion of new technologies and knowledge.

I would like to highlight the key words of the speech; intellectual, technology, policy, innovation, investment and green. This was a clear warning that to be prospering in the future we must propose a policy which is count on intellectual resources as the core capital for investment to drive innovative technology for green world. We are now living in the age of global warming and if we continue to dig our natural resources, one thing is certain in the upcoming century that the next generation will be living in the age of global heating. Provided that we couldn’t find another planet to live on, then human being is now in the right direction to extinction due to planet earth is no longer habitable.

Indonesia has one out of only two tropical rain forests on earth (another one is Amazon) that significantly reduce the evil effect of global warming. Unfortunately, the quality of this rain forest is currently in serious declining. James Gustave Speth, dean of the School of Forestry and Environment Studies at Yale writes “half of the world’s tropical and temperate forest are now gone. The rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second. About half of the wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone…Twenty percent of the corals are gone, and another 20 percent severely threatened. Species are disappearing at rates about a thousand times faster than normal.”

In Indonesia alone, the constant effort of irresponsible hunting to certain animals has been leading to the damage of ecosystem. Elephant, lion, orangutan, anaconda, just to mention a few, is now become those of rare animals. What should be done? How it should be done?

Natural resources and the economic growth

With its large economic potentials, Indonesia has adopted investment-friendly policies to continually promote the country’s economic growth. The availability of vast competitively and rich reserves of natural resources has made Indonesia an attractive choice for domestic and foreign investors, as well as venture capitalists to invest. However, today’s global business environments can no longer count on natural resources as a source of comparative and competitive advantage. Not only due to the constant pressure of green activist but its own nature as non renewable materials that bring itself to an end. It is intellectual resources that should be promoted as the next sources of competitiveness.

“For all the material blessing economic progress has provided, for all the diseases and destitution avoided, for all the glories that shine in the best of our civilization, the cost to the natural world, the cost to the glories of nature, have been huge and must be counted in balance as tragic loss,” writes James Gustave Speth the author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World.

Against this backdrop, this article is intended to provide timely insights for policy makers from both businesses and government officials to converge as well as to share invaluable thoughts and facts. Beside, to address and assess the critical issues and strategic challenges that lie ahead for making the earth a better world. It is the main purpose of this article to promote intellectual property as a true capital to build the nation for the benefit of all stake holders.

Many of us do not realize that our economic development too much rely on extracting the earth. Imagine when you do land clearing for mining site, you at the same time do a process of degradation, it is deforestation. Then the result of your mining goes into machines or turbines as fuel to be burnt and another degradation is about to begin, it is air pollution (Carbon Dioxide). In short, you ruin the ground when you dig into it, you damage the sky when you burn what you have dug, and you speed up the extinction of every single living species between ground and sky. Someday in the next century, a three years old girl would ask her mother; mommy…it’s too terrible here can we just move to another earth.......?

(to be continued...)

*Andi P Rahim is formerly an Associate Partner at Search and Solve Consulting, an intellectual property consulting firm based in Jakarta - Indonesia.