Sci&Tech History

In New Deal that was proposed by Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, bio fuel development is purposed to create jobs, rescue the suffering from the crisis, and including the weakening of the purchasing power because of fuel price increase. In his presentation, Yudhoyono said that the beneficiaries of bio fuel development are job creation and poverty reduction, empowering economy of the villager and farmer, increase internal energy supply, decrease fossil fuel import and foreign exchange efficiency, support other economy activities, infrastructure construction, and to drive small medium enterprise development.

What Yudhoyono said was argued by R. Wisnu Ali Martono, Research Division of Indonesia Natural Resources and Environment Accountant Society (MASLI) that see poverty reduction and bio fuel development are in two opposite pole. According to Martono, productivity 5 ton per ha that been promoted by Bio fuel National Team as a calculation to gain profit is not supported by scientific research. To strengthening his argumentation, Martono refer to scientists from Fuels from Agriculture in Communal Technology (FACT) presentation in Netherlands. In their presentation, FACT compare jatropha curcas productivity per ha (yield) from Cape Verde, India, Mali, Nicaragua, Thailand, Madagascar, Paraguay, and Burkina Faso. It is showed that Nicaragua productivity is the highest—reached 5 ton/ha after the fourth year—and planted in a fertile area. In Indonesia, research to develop jatropha curcas variant which can reach productivity 5 ton/ha is recently started by R&D center of Agricultural Department. Unggul Priyanto, Second Secretary of Bio fuel National Team and a researcher in BPPT, admits information that comes from Bio fuel National Team is a mistake. According to Unggul, the prediction is based on an immature calculation. “The information comes from a scientist which plant jatropha in a small area and predict a number that can be reached in a bigger area, whereas the calculation can be wrong.”

What can the society, specifically the scientist, do when a policy doesn’t perform well? Is it a scientific area or politic?

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