Environmental issues have remained on the back burner despite changes of government and more frequent natural disasters that have inflicted trillions of rupiah in losses and led to thousands of deaths, critics commemorating Earth Day highlighted at a discussion Thursday.

Emil Salim, former state minister for the environment and now a presidential advisor on the issue, said the few existing environmental laws in Indonesia were "practically ineffective".

"As long as we have a government that can't fathom the idea of green economics and that the environment itself is priceless compared to anything with tangible value, nothing is going to come out of having dozens of environmental laws," he said.

Environmental issues, Emil said, had lost out to business, macroeconomics and politics under both past and current government administrations. He called for consistency from civil groups to balance the always-contradicting approaches of businesspeople, politicians and green activists on environmental matters.

Emil noted that maintaining a green, healthy environment carried definite financial benefits, but that these might not be calculable in terms of trade or exports.

"If a flashflood strikes Jakarta and the governor says it costs some trillions (of rupiah), that means that a green environment, which could keep flooding away, is worth that many trillions despite not seeing it on a clear day," Emil said.

Environmental observer Hariadi Kartodihardjo, who recently released a book titled Behind Deforestation and Disasters, shares Emil's view that environmental issues are not appealing to politicians when on the campaign trail and that as a result were scarcely reflected in their policies.

"It's always about commodities and how much money is coming in ... what the macroeconomic condition is. This calls for redefining," he said.

Legislator Tjatur Sapto Edy from the House of Representatives Commission VII on the environment and mining highlighted that the government has yet to assign a representative to deliberate a bill submitted to the presidential office in 2000 on the management of natural resources.

"None of the government's nine prioritized works planned for both this year and next year touch on environmental issues," he said.

He also lamented that the government has no official record of the abundance of Indonesia's natural resources so as to make exploration and exploitation by foreign firms more beneficial for the country.

"To choose an example, the gold mining in Papua by Freeport. I've asked previous and current ministers and none of them know exactly how much reserves we have or their value. Freeport provides the information, which these ministers use as data," said Tjatur.

Indonesia has suffered from a string of natural disasters, the frequency of which has continued to increase over the past few years. These events have included flashfloods, landslides and forest fires.

With deforestation increasing at an unprecedented rate -- now at 2.4 million hectares per year -- government efforts to protect trees have been criticized as half-hearted.

The government is also seen as having failed to take advantage of the newly-ratified Kyoto Protocol by proposing environmental preservation projects to industrialized countries as part of their obligation to reduce their carbon emissions.