Environmental Education in Indonesia

Creating Responsible Citizens in the Global South?

Lyn Parker, Kelsie Prabawa-Sear

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429674747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

Indonesia's wealth of natural resources is being exploited at breakneck speed, and environmental awareness and knowledge among the populace is limited. This book examines how young people learn about the environment to see how education can help to develop environmental awareness and avert vast environmental destruction, not only in Indonesia, but also in the Global South more generally.

Based on in-depth studies conducted in the cities of Yogyakarta and Surabaya, complemented with surveys of students in secondary schools, Environmental Education in Indonesia examines educational curricula, pedagogy and "green" activities to reveal what is currently being done in schools to educate children about the environment. The book investigates the shortcomings in environment education, including underqualified teachers, the civil service mentality, the still-pervasive chalk-and-talk pedagogy and the effect of the examination system. It also analyses the role of local government in supporting (or not) environmental education, and the contribution of environmental NGOs. The book establishes that young people are not currently being exposed to effective environmental education, and the authors propose that the best and most culturally appropriate way forward in Indonesia is to frame pro-environment behaviour and responsibility as a form of citizenship, and specifically that environmental education should be taught as a separate subject.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of contemporary Indonesia and Southeast Asia, education for sustainability and environmental education, as well as sustainability and sustainable development more generally.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9780429397981, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1 Introduction

This book examines the environmental education of young people in Indonesia, and focuses on efforts to educate them towards taking responsibility for the sustainability of the natural environment. Using the base of “what’s happening now” in Indonesia, and taking into consideration the socio-cultural, economic and governance context of contemporary Indonesia, the book also suggests culturally sensitive ways forward, to transform young people into environmentally responsible citizens. In this sense, it is also an evidence-based public policy document.

The literature on environmental education (EE), and on environmentalism in general, is mostly about rich, Western, post-industrial, late capitalist countries where there are strong environmental movements and “green” political parties (Gough, 2003; Jickling & Wals, 2008).¹ Despite the international impacts of environmental problems and prolific use of the slogan “think global” in EE, the academic literature on EE in schools remains a Western, science-based discourse (Cole, 2007; Gough, 2003; Parker, 2016). The Global North is the “default position” in discourses of EE, and anything outside of that is still Other.

Despite the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014), and the series of international conferences and protocols on climate change to which countries in the Global South are signatories, there is a real lacuna in our knowledge of environmental attitudes and knowledge, and pro-environment efforts, in non-Western cultures of the Global South. This book examines the situation in a non-Western, Global South country and argues that this very different socio-cultural and economic context makes a difference. It proposes that the best, most culturally appropriate way forward in Indonesia is to frame pro-environment behaviour and responsibility as a form of citizenship. The objective is the creation of practising pro-environment citizens, who share a collective environmentalist subjectivity.

Indonesia is a resource-rich, democratic, developing country; with 258 million people, it is the world’s fourth largest country in terms of population (UNDESA, 2015, p. 14) and the largest Muslim-majority country; it is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse countries on earth; and it has a magnificent wealth of biodiversity, both terrestrial and marine. Unfortunately, it is also a country of dire environmental problems: of untrammelled exploitation of forests and marine resources, of serious air and water pollution, of population growth and a large and growing middle class set on material prosperity. All this is matched with a low level of environmental consciousness among its population. While the government has made some efforts to address the problem, the research reported upon in this book makes clear that much more needs to be done.

In Indonesia, young people have an established historic role as “agents of change”, both politically and socially. Their spirit and activism have been vital in ushering in each change of regime, beginning with the establishment of the independent nation-state and, most recently, in triggering the resignation of former President Suharto in 1998 and the re-establishment of democracy. They are “the hope of the nation”, and are remarkably optimistic and positive (Nilan, Parker, Bennett, & Robinson, 2011; Parker & Nilan, 2013). They constitute a huge resource for socio-cultural change towards pro-environmental subjectivity and practice. Indonesia is an education “success story”: in its short life as an independent, postcolonial nation-state, i.e. from 1945, it has gone from basically a country of nationwide illiteracy, without a mass, national education system, to a country where virtually all children attend primary school, the vast majority get nine years of schooling, and nearly 80 per cent attend senior high school. This amounts to an “education revolution”. Further, Indonesia inherited the arbitrary borders of the Netherlands East Indies, and in a remarkable process of creating and harnessing nationalism, has successfully constructed itself as a functioning and unified nation-state.

Arguably, the principal mechanism by which it has achieved this is through the national education system: the deployment and teaching of a single national language in schools (in a country of hundreds of languages); the nationwide sharing of the experience of school education; the connection between school graduation and securing desirable jobs (although this is problematic in contemporary Indonesia); and the unifying struggle to achieve development and modernity. In Indonesia, schooling also involves the constant instilling and development of civic pride and national loyalty. Students are constantly exposed to Indonesia’s national ideology, called Pancasila, in school lessons and school culture. Pancasila consists of five inter-connected “pillars”: belief in one Great God, a just and civilised humanity, national unity, consensual and representative democracy, and social justice for all the people.

However, it has to be said that, until now, in this story of national development, “the environment” has barely appeared as a topic. In the discourse of national progress, the environment really only makes an appearance as the wealth of natural resources that it is Indonesia’s prerogative to exploit to the maximum, to create prosperity for its citizens. In this book we call this “resource nationalism”. This means that a transformation of the national discourse is required, if these natural resources are to be used wisely and sustainably. Given the ubiquity of schooling now, and its historic role in creating a patriotic citizenry, environmental education in schools appears as the most suitable vehicle for bringing about this much-needed transformation. In this book, we investigate schools’ and others’ attempts to bring young people to responsible environmental behaviour, because not only will today’s young people inherit the problems wrought by irresponsible development, but also they represent the nation’s best hope for staying their country’s gung-ho destruction of the natural world.

A few notes of caution are warranted. First, there is potential here for unreasonable expectations. Collectively, young people have spearheaded social and political change, but one of the features of Indonesian societies is the strength of family and social norms that instantiate respect of children for their parents. Young people have a relatively powerless position in their families, and it is extremely difficult for children to suggest to their parents new ways of doing things, let alone to disobey their parents. There is something of a disconnect here in the historic public role of young people and their subordinate position within the family domain. Second, Indonesia starts its journey towards environmental sustainability a long way behind many countries of the Global North, where populations enjoy high levels of science knowledge and environmental understanding. For example, we have heard high school children in Indonesia explain that the “greenhouse effect” and global warming are caused by overuse of glass in houses (“glasshouses”); many farmers use red, blue and white chemicals on their crops, without knowing what elements or types of fertiliser, weedicide or pesticide they are applying, and they mix cocktails of these chemicals without wearing protection and using kitchen cooking utensils. International assessment tests of schoolchildren show that Indonesian students are woefully behind in science knowledge (OECD, 2016). Third, although this book suggests ways forward via the formal education system, there is great inertia in the enormous education system. It is not surprising, given that there are over 49 million students and ~3.5 million teachers in levels from kindergarten to senior high school (MOEC (Ministry of Education and Culture), 2016). There are entrenched reasons that teachers have no incentive to change their ways – particularly as many are civil servants first and educators second; and the capacity of teachers, in terms of their knowledge base and pedagogical capabilities, is limited. Fourth, environmental education cannot do the job alone. In many ways, it can be seen as a “safe” option, delaying or shifting responsibility for major structural changes that will only come about with political action. As Jucker said,

The highly idealistic notion – which assumes that we just need to change the way we educate our kids and students in order to make sustainability fall into our lap – is both horribly naïve and utterly unfair to the younger generation.

(Jucker, 2002, p. 9, emphasis in original)

It is important not to set up an oppositional dichotomy of young people versus the state, and/or versus a rapacious economic system. Young people too contribute to the consumption of material goods and hence natural resources, and young people in Indonesia are routine litterers. While many people in Global North countries would find it almost physically impossible to drop an empty plastic water bottle on the ground in the street, and would either cast about for a rubbish bin or carry it home, most young people in Indonesia would drop it without thought. This is all part of the low level of environmental awareness that characterises Indonesian society.

But this is not to demonise Indonesia and valorise the Global North. The model of economic development that has come to represent the desired goal of the post-colonial nation-state since the Second World War, derives from the Industrial Revolution of Euro-America and the Age of Empire (Escobar, 1995). This development model and its capitalist economic system is to blame for much of the world’s environmental woes. And yet, not unreasonably, many post-colonial countries aspire to reach the same levels of prosperity and security that characterise the Global North. This introduces the Gordian knot of the global predicament today: disparate levels of responsibility for climate change and biodiversity loss; different levels of ability to pay for clean-up and switch to more sustainable economies; heightened concerns with national sovereignty as transnational companies and institutions extend and deepen their hold over the global economy; and undiminished commitments to economic growth and heightened prosperity. There is no prospect that a swash-buckling Alexander-like hero can slice through this knot. We must seek slower, wiser solutions.

The environment

Of course, everybody lives in an environment, and it affects their daily life in all sorts of ways: city dwellers may only have to decide whether or not to wear a coat or take an umbrella as they leave the house, but people in hunting and gathering societies rely for their survival on their successful utilisation of the natural environment in which they live. In the richer countries of the world, and in contemporary global discourse, “the environment” is externalised – as something apart from humans, as a bank of natural resources, sometimes as a threat (in the form of cyclones or earthquakes) and as something that can be manipulated and should be managed – hence climate change conventions, the declaration of national parks, etc. While most people in such countries assume that humans depend on the environment, opinions vary as to the extent to which humans can make “withdrawals” from that bank without thought for future generations; the extent to which continuing economic growth is desired over care for the sustainability of the environment; and the extent to which humans are perceived as an intrinsic part of nature (an eco-centric worldview), versus the anthropo-centric view that humans, as superior beings, are meant to have mastery (or stewardship) over nature, or indeed must “conquer” nature (see, for example, Schultz & Zelezny, 1999; Thompson & Barton, 1994).

The idea of a split between eco- and anthro-centric worldviews, of nature versus human society, of the natural sciences on the one hand and the humanities/social sciences on the other, has some validity because in some contexts it has real purchase. Many biologists would, for instance, favour the establishment of large, people-free protected areas such as national parks and wilderness areas, in both Global North and Global South contexts. On the other hand, many social scientists point out the “rich country” blindness of such actions and look for ways to simultaneously address the social justice issues that erupt with attempts to save or conserve people-less wilderness (see, for example, Guha, 1989; Nixon, 2011). In many real-world contexts, we find ourselves in quandaries over whether to prioritise the environment or society-driven demands (e.g. whether to go by public transport and take longer to commute, or spend the time more efficiently by taking the car). But the split is not necessarily that clear-cut. If public transport systems were adequate and efficient, there would be less of a quandary. If public policy and budgets prioritised the environment, individuals could sensibly take public transport. We have scientific and technical solutions to many of the world’s “environmental” problems – which have been caused by humans – but lack the social understanding and political will to implement them. What is needed is a humanity-in-environment approach.

After all, we are in the Anthropocene Age. As Philips has written:

Planet Earth is more than 4.5 billion years old; life has existed on it for more than 3.5 billion years, with humans on it for 2–3 million years, living with other life forms. But the Anthropocene Age is named for us. As its namers, Crutzen and Stoermer, put it: “It seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind [sic] in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term ‘anthropocene’ for the current geological epoch.”

There has been overwhelming agreement with the thesis of this original scientific paper.

(Philips, 2014, p. 978)²

As the draft Islamic Declaration on Climate Change states, “We have now become a force of nature.”³

The environment is an empirical reality, which can be studied scientifically, but it is also a social construct. Different societies, different regimes and different organisations have their own perceptions of the environment and of environmental issues. Insofar as it has one, Indonesia’s national discourse of the environment, as mentioned above, is one of abundant natural resources, such as forests, ripe for exploitation to enrich its people. Increasingly, there is a parallel but more muted discourse of global and local environmental issues, and Indonesia’s international representatives sign commitments on behalf of the country to limit carbon emissions.⁴ At the same time, wet-rice farmers in Java are primarily interested in their small environment of paddy field, water supply and weather; city dwellers mostly identify rubbish as the nation’s number one environmental issue; and indigenous peoples are often engaged in site-specific fights to save their own enviro-economy, the forest. It is necessary to understand different people’s different understandings of nature and the environment.

Environmental issues are almost by...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theorising responsible environmental citizenship
• 3 Introducing environmental education
• 4 Introducing Indonesia
• 5 Education in Indonesia
• 6 Religious environmental education?
• 7 Is anyone responsible for the environment in Yogyakarta?
• 8 Hollow environmental education in Yogyakarta
• 9 A coordinated approach to environmental education in Surabaya
• 10 Environmentality in Surabaya?
• 11 Young people as environmental subjects? Identity, behaviour and responsibility
• 12 Conclusion, and a way forward
• Index