“Mulai berburu beasiswa ke luar negeri”
Asnawi Abdullah, London

Secara resmi, aku baru bisa mendaftar beasiswa untuk sekolah lagi tahun 1998. Pada saat itu aku mulai 'memburu'. Kebetulan, saat itu Prof. Kerling dari KIT Amsterdam sedang mengadakan penelitian di Aceh. Aku jadikan dia ‘sasaran’ pertama. Aku bantu dia mengolah data menggunakan Epi-Info dan SPSS.


Rupanya, Prof. Kerling sangat terkesan terhadap output kerjaku. Terus, aku meminta sarannya bagaimana supaya aku bisa ambil S2 di KIT. Kemudian dia kirim brosur dan sejumlah lain dari Belanda. Namun KIT tidak punya beasiswa, aku disuruh melamar melalui kedutaan, beasiswa Stuned atau sejenisnya. Seseorang rekanku saat itu berjanji akan membantu mencari Application Form dari kedutaan. Namun, sampai batas waktu penerimaan formulir aplikasi aku belum terima application form beasiswa itu, padahal offer letter daru universitas sudah ada. Mungkin hal ini tidak akan terjadi, seandainya pada saat itu, ada internet seperti sekarang. Baru belakangan aku tahu bahwa di internet juga kita bisa download application form. Yang jelas, kesempatan pertama hilang.

Kesempatan kedua datang, yakni beasiswa ke University of Southern California, Amerika. Ada proyek HP IV Depkes mengirimkan pegawai untuk belajar Managed Care di USA. Wilayah kerjaku, Aceh, memang tidak termasuk wilayah proyek HP IV, tetapi Dirjen Binkesmas, menawarkan kepadaku atas nama jatah Depkes. Tentu aku senang sekali, aku lengkapi semua persyaratan, offer letter juga aku terima. Namun akhirnya, aku tidak bisa berangkat, dengan alasan Aceh bukan wilayah HP IV. Aku sedikit kecewa pada saat itu. Ada beberapa pertanyaan dalam hatiku. "Kenapa aku dulu ditawarin, lagi pula ini bukan atas nama Aceh, melainkan atas nama Depkes, jadi tidak ada soal dengan Aceh bukan wilayah proyek".

Salah seorang yang baik hati dari Depkes memberikan solusi dan mengusulkan, untuk membuat surat Lolos Butuh dari Dinkes Banda Aceh. Artinya, setelah lulus nanti, dengan surat Lolos Butuh aku harus pindah dari Aceh ke Depkes Jakarta, karena aku pergi sekolah atas nama Depkes. Hal ini tentunya sangat sulit bagi Dinkes Aceh untuk melepaskan aku. Tapi dengan penuh perjuangan akhirnya aku bisa menyakinkan Kepala Dinas Kesehatan dan surat Lolos Butuhpun ditanda tangani. Masalah belum selesai, ada tarik ulur dalam perijinan, yang menurut beberapa rekanku sebenarnya bisa diselesaikan dengan duit. Namun saya tidak bisa membaca hal itu Sangat sulit dibaca bagi orang kurang pengalaman seperti aku ini. Permainan dalam hal itu sangat cantik, kalau tidak sudah banyak orang bisa masuk penjara. Akhirnya, kesempatan kedua hilang lagi.

Meskipun begitu, aku tidak pernah patah semangat. AusAID merupakan target berikutnya. AusAID sering menjadi target saya, tapi persyaratannya luar biasa banyaknya pada waktu itu: harus ada tanda tangan biro Kerjasama Luar Negeri, persetujuan ini, itu lah, yang membuat susah sebagian besar orang di luar Jakarta. Di samping itu Brosur dan Application Form dikirim oleh Depkes Pusat selalu telat bahkan ada yang satu minggu sebelum deadline. Entah disengaja atau apalah maksudnya, itu yang dialami oleh semua instansi di daerah. Syukurlah, sekarang internet menghilangkan hambatan surat menyurat dan akses kepada informasi.

Kesempatan ketiga yang menghampiriku adalah ke Mahidol University dengan beasiswa dari pemerintah Thailand untuk mengambil MSc dalam Primary Health Care. Dirjen Binkesmas menawarkan langsung kepadaku secara pribadi, sehingga Dinkes Banda Aceh tidak bisa menahan atau melarang aku. Akupun mengisi form, ikut seleksi, hingga akhirnya terpilih tiga orang: aku, seorang dari Bali, dan salah satu staf Dinkes Jawa Barat. Semua persiapan sudah selesai, namun tiba-tiba datang pengumuman bahwa dengan sangat menyesal, karena krisis ekonomi, nilai mata uang jatuh! Beasiswa yang semula untuk tiga orang, hanya dapat diberikan untuk dua orang. Tidak jelas bagaimana prosedur memilih 2 dari 3, yang jelas aku tidak terpilih, hanya diberikan kepada dua kandidat dari Bali dan Jabar. Sedih, tentu aku sedih, namun yang bisa aku ucapkankan belum rezeki aku.

Allah berkendak lain, “Aku harus berkeluarga dulu barangkali, mungkin bahaya sebagai lajang ke Thailand, banyak gangguan iman disana,” pikirku menghibur diri pada waktu itu. Yang pasti, sebulan setelah itu, aku menikah dengan adik kelas SMA-ku. Sudahlah, untuk sementara kutunda dulu keinginan sekolah, kami sepakat merencanakan punya si Kecil dulu. Alhamdulillah, satu bulan setelah anak aku lahir, aku berangkat ke Australia, kuliah di Monash University.

Berikutnya:
“Berprestasi di S-2, mengejar beasiswa S-3”

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Israr Ardiansyah, London
The Jakarta Post, Opinion, 10 August 2006

The escalating Middle East conflict is obviously one of U.S. Secretary Condoleezza Rice's main concerns. However, one result of her visit to Southeast Asia recently -- amid her tight diplomatic travel schedule -- may offer a glimmer of hope for Borneo's forests.



Rice's joint statement with Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid in Kuala Lumpur on 28 July confirmed the U.S support for the governments of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia's shared vision to conserve the Heart of Borneo (HOB). She announced a U.S. commitment of US$100,000 to help the conservation project expected to be declared officially later this year.

The pledge is a good step, following the results of the 11th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur last December, and the commitment in the Conference of Parties (COP) 8 to Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) in Curitiba, Brazil, in March.

In the ASEAN Summit, the heads of government, through the statement read by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, highlighted the importance of providing sanctuaries in the Heart of Borneo to conserve the 220,000 square kilometers of biodiversity-rich rain forest and to protect the island's water catchments. Furthermore, the HOB launch in Curitiba by the governments of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia has helped spread the Borneo forest conservation messages to the international community.

However, the ASEAN Summit chairman's statement, commitment in Curitiba and Rice's pledge remain far from addressing Borneo's environmental problems. There are so many crucial issues within the island, where some 422 new species have been found in the last 25 years and which is home to potential resources for medicine. Solutions to the lingering problems will guarantee the success of the HOB plan and implementation.

It was only in July last year that the Indonesian Agriculture Minister and other high-ranking officials said the government was considering the development of the world's largest oil palm plantation (1.8 million hectares) along the Malaysia-Indonesia border. It was heralded as one solution to unemployment and the prolonged economic problems in Indonesia (The Jakarta Post, 18 July 2005).

The concept got a positive response from private and state-owned companies as well as foreign investors. Interested parties submitted proposals for the new border-area plantations to the government shortly afterward. On the other hand, the idea was heavily criticized by other lobby groups.

There has been no progress regarding the "world's largest oil palm plantation". The government has neither officially declared the area a new conservation area nor totally halted the plantation plan. Speaking at a meeting of local governments in Palembang last June, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced the plan to prepare two million hectares of oil palm plantation in South Sumatra and West Kalimantan for advancing the biodiesel industry in the country. If we do not have a clear land use map and strategy, the biodiesel issue may attract other provinces in Kalimantan to follow, which subsequently will put more pressure on community land and threaten the prospect of the protected areas/HOB initiative.

However, we have not managed to deal with conservation issues in the decentralization era. Discussing conservation without a thorough understanding of local people's needs and aspirations may lead us to a false sense of reality. The government should show that HOB is one of the best options for the future of Borneo. Hence, a reliable economic evaluation of the Heart of Borneo is needed to ensure that it is a better option than other attractive issues, such as biodiesel source plantations and logging activities.

The government should be able to explain the so-called intangible benefits of the forests, for example water resources, in a more measurable calculation which is easily understood by other stakeholders. When we talk about the pledge of $100,000 for HOB conservation, we should not forget that -- based on FAO statistics -- palm oil generated more than $2.1 billion in export revenues for Indonesia and more than $3.8 billion for Malaysia in 2002, for instance.

Meanwhile, some studies supported by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) -- as well as some investigations conducted by organizations such as West Kalimantan's anti-illegal logging consortium (KAIL) and Telapak -- between 2001 and 2004 revealed that illegal logging activities are backed by cukong (financiers) to the tune of millions of US dollars. Hence, we have to be able to guarantee that HOB is economically viable and able to absorb the local people's aspirations, better than the cukongs did. It is not about the amount of money pledged for the conservation project but the dissemination of the strong argument for the conservation itself.

Moreover, the three governments should make full use of the Heart of Borneo conservation to combat land and forest fires, by implementing the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution as soon as possible. The number of hotspots in Sumatra and Kalimantan is increasing at the moment and we have been used to the "annual fire season".

The big forest fires from 1982 to 1983 and land fires from 1997 to 1998 should remind us that any conservation efforts will fail if we cannot identify and tackle the potential threats. Indonesia needs to ratify the agreement urgently. Otherwise, the glimmer of hope for Borneo's forest will just go up in smoke.

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Understanding globalisation through historical approach

Santo Dewatmoko, Sheffield

It is believed that globalisation is as old as civilisation. Globalization is an historical process that began with the first movement of people out of Africa [ancient “homo sapiens”] into other parts of the world. Travelling short, then longer distances, migrants, merchants, and others have always taken their ideas, customs, and products into new lands.

The melding, borrowing, and adaptation of outside influences can be found in many areas of human life. (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/about/history.jsp). Indeed, it is a historical process that began with our human ancestors moving out of Africa to spread all over the globe. Next movement is identified by the migration of Indo-German and Aryan to Western Europe and to India. Nevertheless, we can only track the movement in Afro-Eurasian continent as the movement in “the new world” (Continent of America) is not largely tracked. In this way, the process is then followed by the vast ancient civilisation of Egypt, Greek, Romans, and China. Global flow of trade between ancient India and China was known as “sutra”. This global trade is also impacted on the socio-religion aspect, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.

It is noted that Roman Empire has a special connection with Egypt and Asia Minor, including the spread of Christianity, whereas the Jews have spread out from Middle East into the other parts of the region. From the socio-religion point of view, it is noted that the religion of Islam in 5th-10th century also has spread out form Saudi Arabia into Middle East, southern Europe, northern Africa, India (South Asia), parts of Russia and China, and South East Asia. The process of what is now called “globalisation” was notably taken place at that time.

It is clear that the biggest trigger of globalisation process is economic. Based on this perspective, globalisation has been practised for thousand years ago. Mining, oil, and gas have also been drivers for trade. Development occurred when it became possible to produce more food than for local consumption. The invention and development of matters such as coinage, language, and political and legal systems allowed a framework and a context for many nations (Rippon, 2005).

Several historians argue that the long process of globalization is considered embarked on voyage of discovery of Marco Polo (1254-1324) form Europe into the “other” continent (Horgan, 1996). Although, the initial intension of this expedition is to know how far is the “end” of the world, his follower remarkably practiced the economic expansion, trade development, and reimbursement of capital. First breakthrough in economic globalisation was practiced by Arab traders when they come to India and China, even to South East Asia (Stiglitz, 1998). It is then followed by European, especially Netherlands, Portuguese, and British. They came for “new goods”, including spices, from the land they visited. Besides that, they sooner or later opened the market for their products, although it was ultimately ended with coercion, namely to colonise the region they had visited. The discovery of America by Columbus 500 years ago has an enormous implication on the process of globalisation. In this way, it is understood that globalisation had been utilised by colonialism, in which in America developed into the practice of capitalism.

Second breakthrough in globalisation of economic is shown at the end of 19th century till the beginning of 20th century (Stiglitz, 1998). It is important to note that the changes that occurred at that time were the innovation of monetary system that has been stabilised and standardised with gold measurement. Qualitatively, these changes had some influences on the process of globalisation. Moreover, the new invention and development of science and technology was running fast, especially with the invention of telegraph, telephone, aircraft, maritime, and railway. In this second breakthrough, the flow of globalisation is said out of the nations’ boundary.

At the beginning of 20th century, after the collapse of second breakthrough, there comes the third breakthrough in globalisation. Liberalisation and stock and good market integration in world scale is difficult to avoid again. The emergence of new institutions in international scale has facilitated production expansion, trade and financial, so it is easy to spread from one region that has better production, trade and financial to another region in over the world.

With this breakthrough, information and computation technology progression has influence almost all of the human live aspects, and also with biotechnology and genetic engineer development. The most revolutionary development is the internet expansion that enters and influences all activities of business world, politic and culture. The Website has change world face and indeed, the mind way and people communication.

In line with this Stiglitz’s “breakthrough of globalisation”, Robertson divides the history of globalisation into three waves. Globalisation focus is on the past 500 years when humans experienced three distinct global waves of interconnectiveness (Robertson, 2003). It is said that the first wave after 1500 AD centred on the globalisation of regional trade, the second wave after 1800 AD gained impetus from industrialization, while the third derived from the architecture of a new world order after 1945. Each wave began with an event, sometimes a war, which gave space for its emergence as a global force for change. Each wave produced new forms of interconnections and generated new synergies that in time led to its own transformation. No wave has ever been the creature of one country alone, although at times hegemons and would-be hegemons have attempted to monopolize them for their own advantage (Robertson, 2003). It is implied that no wave has ever been the product of one "civilization" or one culture alone. In this respect, all waves encompass many cultures; they enable them to interact, although not necessarily as equals. Nevertheless, it creates instability and makes war and conquest attractive alternatives. It is said that the first wave weakened in the 18th century for this reason; similarly the second wave was failed in the early 20th century. From Robertson’s opinion, now we are in the third wave, and the destination of this wave is still unknown.

From the history of globalisation, it is believed that globalisation brings about some good effect and bad effect on our life. Some say that globalisation has to be occurred in the world, and others say that globalisation has been stepped “the wrong way”.

(to be continued : Globalisation: effects and opportunities)

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