Warief Djajanto Basorie
Bonn, a small town in Germany, will host the World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development, "Moving into the Second Half of the Decade."
More than 700 participants, from governments and international agencies to the private sector, from civil society organizations to educational institutes will meet there from March 31 to April 2, 2009. They will take stock of the achievements made and the lessons to be learned from the first five years of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, DESD, 2005-2014.
They will also set the agenda for the second half of the decade, particularly in the meeting of emerging sustainable development issues and the mapping out of the educational responses to them. Issues like the current global economic downturn and climate change are of deep concern.
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is the global effort led by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, to enhance public awareness and practice of sustainable development through all types of teaching and learning.
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of people today and accounts for the needs for future generations. DESD is a 10-year agenda to change people's behavior, habits and lifestyles through ESD, to put in place sustainable development practices worldwide.
How has ESD worked in Indonesia? How is sustainable development practiced?
This writer traveled to 10 regions throughout Indonesia to observe ESD activities in the 15-month period from October 2007 to December 2008.
Each of the activities observed reflects engagement in one or several of the 11 core issues of the Asia-Pacific Regional Strategy for the DESD. These core issues range from information and awareness, to engagement of leaders.
In Batam, organic farmers in the Sei Temiang area grow cucumbers and mustard greens using compost. They manage biodiversity. In Surabaya, the Tunas Hijau (Green Buds) youth environment NGO, headed by a 19-year-old, conducted a seven-nation children's conference on climate change. The mostly elementary school children express an active awareness and literacy on global warming. In North Sumatra, the people of Bandar Setia village manage the environment and cultivate marketable fruit on once fallow public land through community development.
In West Java, in the Bale Endah area just south of Bandung, the Yayasan Masyarakat Sehat NGO (Healthy Community Foundation) promotes sustainable health. It helps to reduce the harm from injecting drug use that can cause HIV infection. In Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, students in state elementary school 4 (SDN 4) learn the tenets of good citizenship and governance. They demonstrate honesty in their habits by buying pens and erasers at an unattended honesty stall.
In Pekanbaru, Riau, state elementary school 5 (SDN 5) vigorously pushes forward environmental education. It becomes a model of how a community can enhance a green environment with advocacy from the students themselves, who bring home and promote their awareness and practices. In the hillside village of Meranti, north of Gorontalo City, Sulawesi, a rural community drives itself to transform barren land to a productive green.
In Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, enterprising women use small loans to create local jobs. Knowledge of micro credit empowers them to lead successful mini businesses.
In Lampung, jobless high school leavers have the promise of a hopeful future. They become tour guides in a government training program to help promote their region through tourism. In the East Bali village of Tenganan, famed for its geringsing cloth, local artisans sustain an indigenous knowledge system through the passing down of an exacting cloth weaving technique, the double tie-dye.
In conclusion, this unscientific, spot survey of 10 regions in Indonesia indicates Education for Sustainable Development is ingrained in the communities visited. Without having to know the term ESD, the people concerned practice ESD through belief, an activity that has a present and future value for them. They sustain and enhance that activity by a sense of common ownership, joint responsibility and a shared future.
A key to their success is local leaders who drove the ESD process forward. It is the unsung technology researcher in Batam, who introduced organic farming, or a local administrator in Lampung, who pushed for life skills training to advance local tourism.
It is the village head in North Sumatra who wanted his people to earn extra income through saving the soil. It is the rural community leader in Gorontalo who led the campaign to green the village valley or a youth advocate on AIDS in West Java who helped his peers save their future. It is the indefatigable school heads in Pekanbaru and Palangkaraya who wanted to realize a dream their students could live in.
Lessons from these local champions can buoy people with confidence that the ESD message does get through and get results. These movers and shakers for sustainable development have their counterparts around the world.
The writer teaches journalism at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute, LPDS, in Jakarta #
source : http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=619120
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