Widjanarka E. Saksana

Wiedjanarka created a comprehensive national program to minimize the damage inflicted on the environment and the population by the current explosive growth in the use of chemical pesticides. Wiedjanarka realized that before he could effectively advocate the outlawing of chemical pesticides, he would first need to identify non-chemical alternatives. He launched an ambitious program with leading rural private voluntary organizations (PVOs) to test biological and organic farming approaches to pesticides. Under Wiedjanarka's guidance, alternatives were identified and explained to the rural population. The numerous publications he has created with the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) he created expose the dangers of pesticides to Indonesians who have been bombarded by chemical companies' advertisements. This publicity advocates the use of these pesticides, many of which have long been outlawed outside Indonesia, for healthy, abundant crops. Wiedjanarka is changing the way Indonesians farm—and saving human lives and the environment in the process.

Wiedjanarka has developed very useful alliances with a network of people struggling with the pesticides problem throughout the world. Even though 57 pesticides were outlawed in Indonesia in 1986, farmers continue to purchase and use the readily available (but illegal) pesticides. Most recently, Wiedjanarka helped prepare and edit a world report on "informed consent" as a principle to govern the international trade of dangerous chemical pesticides. He has documented the impact of the lack of disclosure in international trade in Indonesia as one major element of this work.

A tri-annual journal of myths and facts about pesticides, posters, and comic books, are all methods by which Wiedjanarka spreads his message. He conducts extensive reporting on pesticide habits, abuses, and the false advertising which has lured farmers to the chemicals in the past.

Wiedjanarka knows well the environmental, agricultural and human health problems chemical pesticides create. He has been involved in every aspect of the campaign toward safer farming—investigating, experimenting with safe forms of pest control, and educating the public on the danger of what had become traditional farming. His efforts are stimulating the safe development of Indonesian farming.