Environmentalism and education for sustainability in Indonesia

This special issue grew out of collaborative research that aimed to identify how education could contribute to creating environmentally aware citizens in Indonesia. The main problems animating the project were the enormous environmental destruction occurring in the country and the low level of environmental awareness among the Indonesian populace. The researchers in the project wanted to do something about the first problem by addressing the second. We wanted to investigate how to foster environmental consciousness and pro-environment action in Indonesia.

Indonesia’s environmental problems are many and dire. The rubbish in the streets and rivers and the poor quality of the air in the cities are such that even the most casual visitor will remark on them. Internationally, Indonesia has ‘talked the talk’ of environmental responsibility: it hosted the UN Conference on Climate Change in 2007, participated in the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014), and signed up to a REDD+ Treaty (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) with Norway in 2011. However, many see Indonesia’s environmentalism on the international stage as a ‘NATO’ approach (No Action, Talk Only). Indonesia is the world’s number three emitter of greenhouse gases (World Bank Group 2016) and the world’s ‘second-largest contributor to marine plastic pollution after China’ (Wright and Waddell 2017).

Deforestation rates are high, and, despite a series of laws and regulations, such as a moratorium on new permits to clear primary forests (Presidential Instruction no. 10/2011), continue apace (REDD 2016). Deforestation through burning and logging causes massive greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, air pollution from smoke and haze, loss of biodiversity, and a host of associated problems (see Nilan this issue). Deforestation has been driven predominantly by agricultural expansion, especially the rapid extension of oil palm plantations.

The seas, rivers, coral beds and mangrove fringes of Indonesia’s archipelago are also polluted. Indonesia has the dubious distinction of having 4 of the world’s 20 most polluted rivers (Wright and Waddell 2017). Many marine areas are overfished, with some devoid of fish and other marine species; in some places local people still fish by blowing up coral reefs (with explosives), reducing them to rubble, for short term gain.

It seems that every year there are international news stories about the massive amounts of rubbish, especially plastic waste, that are washed up on Bali’s tourist beaches. In March 2018, the BBC reported that government officials had declared a ‘garbage emergency’ along some 6 kilometres of coastline, deploying 700 cleaners and 35 trucks (BBC News 2018). The concern was with the image problem it created for the tourist industry. In classic NATO style, the Governor of Bali had declared back in December 2014, that the island would be ‘plastic bag free by 2018’ (Wright and Waddell 2017). One report on Australian television news in March 2018 explained that this was a seasonal event, due to the particular ocean currents that flow around Bali at this time. With innocent but appalling ignorance, one of the cleaners, standing in front of a plastic-strewn beach, ended his apologetic interview with a shrug and the words, ‘That’s nature.’

His misguided conclusion is symptomatic of the general lack of awareness and knowledge of the natural environment and of the impact of humans on the natural world among the Indonesian population. Even the World Bank (2014) has noticed it: ‘[E]nvironmental values are not deeply embedded in society, leading to undervaluation of natural resources and environmental services.’ General ignorance about human-environment interactions, in combination with decentralised government, which has opened opportunities for self-interest and corruption to all levels of government, and lack of capacity and environmental understanding among government officials, mean that the many laws that are meant to protect Indonesia’s rich and wonderful natural environment are rarely enforced.

At the same time, Indonesia is developing rapidly, meaning that demand for consumer products, infrastructure (roads, transport, communications) and energy are growing rapidly, in turn creating more environmental destruction. A rapidly growing, and consuming, middle class, and urbanisation, are two salient points of Indonesia’s demography, and both contribute to ecological loss and damage. There is an urgent need for the development of a mass environmental consciousness in Indonesia. In the Global North, this developed among the educated middle classes. It remains to be seen if the same phenomenon can happen in Indonesia.

The processes of creating new environmental subjectivities and practice en masse, and thus a new groundswell of support for environmental sustainability, are complex, but all point to the value of education, whether formal or informal. This is where our research project comes in. We aimed to identify how various types of education can contribute to creating environmentally aware citizens in Indonesia. Our researchers studied a range of different educational projects in different contexts: schools and universities, among rice farmers, young urban activists, and in and around national parks.

The research was conducted under the auspices of a major Australia Research Council Discovery Grant by a team of researchers from Indonesia and Australia.¹ Most of the researchers are anthropologists, and our main methodology was participant observation during fieldwork in various sites around Indonesia. There was also a team survey, and of course analysis of primary sources such as school curricula and textbooks, and educational resources produced by environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs). While participant observation was the key methodology, we have drawn heavily on the sub-discipline of environmental education (hereafter EE), such that much of our work could be labelled the anthropology of environmental education (Kopnina 2012).²

One important strand of research in EE and in the study of environmentalism as a social movement has been the study of how individuals come to develop an environmental sensibility. The work of Louise Chawla, while controversial, was key to the development of this line of research (Chawla 1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2001). Studying life histories of environmental activists in the US and Norway, she identified these influences: childhood experiences in nature; experiences of environmental destruction; environmental values held by the family; environmental organisations; role models (friends or teachers); and education. This focus on the individual environmentalist has barely been done in Indonesia but see Nilan and Wibawanto (2015) and the article by Acciaioli and Afiff in this issue.

However, there has been a considerable amount of research on the environmental movement in Indonesia (e.g. Aditjondro 1990, 1998; Colombijn 1998; Cribb 1988; Crosby 2013; Peluso et al. 2008). During the New Order of President Suharto (1966–1998), much social protest occurred under the guise of environmentalism. One NGO activist claimed, ‘The only way to be anti-Suharto is through the environmental movement. There is no other way to talk about Suharto or human rights.’ (Newsweek 1991). Although most activists in ENGOs in Indonesia can be assumed to be of the educated middle classes (Eldridge 1995; Hadiwinata 2003), in Indonesia, farmers, the landless, and lower (often rural) classes engage in much of the activism and protest against particular development projects.

The first article in this collection, by Greg Acciaioli and Suraya Afiff, examines the social marketing approach of a transnational conservation organisation named Rare. It educates (or converts) individuals in target communities to become Rare ‘Fellows’, who work for its conservation causes, like the elimination of forest fires. However, in research with the ‘fellows’ and their communities in Central Kalimantan, the researchers found that the neo-liberal focus on the individual did not yield the desired effects across the community. They argue that Rare’s neo-liberal attempt to transform individuals neglects the larger, societal and economic forces – like the proliferation of oil palm plantations and the national discourses of industrialised agriculture – that shape local people’s behaviour.

The next group of papers examines environmental education in schools in Yogyakarta and Surabaya. Our team focused on senior high schools (grades 10–12, with students aged 16–18 years). We realise that there are probably more nature-based activities in the lower ranks of schooling, particularly with the children in the first grades of primary school. We chose to focus on students in the final years of school because they have long been exposed to the values taught in schools, have some idea about community values and political issues, and can be articulate. We chose Yogyakarta first of all, because it is a university city and is known as a major NGO hub. However, we were disappointed at the lack of EE being conducted in schools in Yogyakarta and turned to Surabaya, the provincial capital of East Java. There, Ibu Risma, the dynamic mayor, had a strong ‘clean and green’ agenda, and had mandated that schools had to be conducting EE. Partly as a result, the city has become much cleaner and greener.

The article by Lyn Parker, Kelsie Prabawa-Sear and Wahyu Kustiningsih reports on the results of a team survey conducted in senior high schools in Yogyakarta and Surabaya that had EE programmes. Students were happy to self-identify as environmentalists, but when we drilled down to their attitudes and reported behaviours, we found that they thought that ‘society’ – rather than governments, or business or industry – is responsible for addressing environmental problems. At the same time, a large majority of students identified society’s lack of environmental knowledge, care and awareness as the main barrier to solving environmental problems. The contradiction means that the prospects for environmental sustainability are not rosy.

Prabawa-Sear presents some results and suggestions based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in schools in Yogyakarta and Surabaya. Having found that there is precious little education happening in so-called ‘environmental education’ programmes in schools, she affixes some of the blame to EE programmes that encourage schools (and students) to participate in order to win prestige and prizes, rather than to educate. Given the urgent need for action, and taking the many problems of the Indonesian education system into account, she makes the radical suggestion of making EE a discrete, examinable subject in schools, which could be articulated with programmes such as the Adiwiyata programme that would provide opportunities for problem-solving and environmental action at the local level – an approach which is the antithesis of EE as advocated by ‘experts’ in the Global North.

The third article on EE in schools is more ethnographic, describing the social meaning of EE for students in schools in Surabaya. Danau Tanu and Lyn Parker show that students join the environment clubs and programmes, and participate in their activities, because of the fun of socialising, of doing things together, and of getting dirty, and because they want to belong to the ‘family’ of friends that the clubs foster. The programme’s focus on activities rather than learning, understanding or problem-solving, means that as education, it is something of a missed opportunity.

Pam Nilan’s article is about university student environmental activism in Palembang, South Sumatra. In this article, the annual smoke haze created by the burning of rainforests to make way for oil palm plantations is palpable, as students and the researcher coughed their way through interviews, often with streaming eyes. However, environmental activist students seemed to accept the smoke, and rarely mentioned the causes of the smoke haze. Nilan explores this apparent contradiction using Foucault’s idea of the truth regime: that which it is possible to think, and which is accepted as truth in society. Student discourses ran along three lines: (a) reminiscent of the ‘natural’ plastics pollution in beaches on Bali, some thought that the fires were ‘natural’, (b) some explained that irresponsible farmers deliberately lit fires (thus ignoring the oil palm companies and political elites), and (c) some thought the government should prevent the forest fires. In these ways, students naturalised the smoke haze as something that had to be endured every year.

Meredian Alam and Pam Nilan write about the tactics and ideology deployed by young urban activists in Bandung as they protested the commercial development of the Babakan Siliwangi city forest. The activists used ‘protest repertoires’ – including a ‘long march’ to attract public interest, pantomime and the production and distribution of research showing the deleterious potential impact of the destruction of the city forest – thus combining education and advocacy (protest). They had learned these protest repertoires through previous training and actions with international ENGO Greenpeace.

The final article moves to social actors in another context: rice farmers in Indramayu, on the north coast of West Java, and in East Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. Researchers Yunita Triwardani Winarto, Rhino Ariefiansyah, Adlinanur Prihandiani and Mohammed Taqiuddin have been working with these farmers for a long period and explore the importance of ‘nurturance’ and ‘trust’ in developing the relationship between researchers and farmers in order to enhance farmer adaptability to climate change. The article also examines the extent to which the state – represented by agricultural extension agents and the district government – can be engaged to support such initiatives. A striking finding was that dealing with the authorities was more challenging than working with farmers.

The articles show that EE is a slow and gradual process. In many contexts in Indonesia, EE is unsatisfactory and ephemeral. Clearly EE can be political, and there have been successes (as in Bandung), but in contexts such as schools, it tends not to be effective. EE should be only one form in a multi-pronged attack in raising awareness about the environment: enhancing knowledge and understanding about human-nature interactions, mobilising care for the conservation and sustainability of nature, advocacy, activism and media work, and political campaigning. Only then will the population be motivated to save Indonesia’s natural beauty and wealth of biodiversity.

Notes on contributor

Lyn Parker is a Professor in Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia and an anthropologist who has specialised in the anthropology of Indonesia. Email: [email protected]

ORCID

Lyn Parker http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2218-9919

Notes

1 The grant was DP130100051 ‘Fostering Pro-Environment Consciousness and Practice: Environmentalism, Environmentality and Environmental Education in Indonesia’. Most of the articles in this special issue were presented in more rudimentary form at a workshop held at Universitas Indonesia, Depok, in December 2015.

2 For the sake of simplicity, in this special issue, we mainly use the term ‘environmental education’ rather than synonyms like ‘education for sustainable development’ and the more desirable ‘education for sustainability’.