The Grassroots Approach for a Sustainable Environmental Movement
Citizen OS volunteer Rie Takeuchi explores Let’s Do It Indonesia’s grassroots approach to waste management — The 10 Islands Project.
The Challenges of Let’s Do It Indonesia.
After interviewing experts from several different institutions, I have seen a lot of attempts to gather opinions from various groups for decision-making purposes.
Regardless of the size of the institution or whether they are for profit or non-profit, there is often, in actual practice, a struggle to realise a grassroots approach.
There are probably many reasons for this — it is often hard to gather and organise opinions, and it is often messy due to receiving random comments by various different means, or a lack of transparency in the arguments.
So, the question is always — how can we make it possible?
In this case study, I’ll highlight the challenges of an environmental organisation named “Let’s Do It Indonesia” (LDI Indonesia from here on), which is tackling waste problems in Indonesia. They are trying to increase the involvement of citizens in sustainable environmental issues, by making use of the Citizen OS platform.
The 10 Island Project
This project aims to solve environmental problems and build a sustainable plan by gathering opinions from local inhabitants, local governments and other stakeholders.
The leaders of LDI Indonesia set up topics on the Citizen OS platform for each of the 10 Indonesian islands involved. There, basic information about the current situation regarding the waste problem is provided by the leader, and participants can post arguments for how to solve it.
Topics are open to the public for discussion for approximately three months, after which LDI Indonesia will analyse and examine the best and most realistic ideas from all proposals. They plan to take the resulting ideas to the local governments, to put them into practice.
“The main aim of this project is to bring local people’s opinions into the process of solving the waste problem and building a sustainable environmental plan,”
Ms. Agustina Iskandar, the leader of LDI Indonesia, explained.
“In Indonesia, 170,000 tons of waste are generated per day. It’s a huge amount. When it comes to solving this problem, I think we need opinions from the people, since sometimes they know more about the real situation. And moreover, it’s necessary to make people aware of this problem. To increase awareness and involvement among people for solving waste problems, we decided to use the Citizen OS platform.”
From “Top-Down Approach” to “Grassroots Approach”
But there is much more to this story, and the reasons they decided to carry out this project.
Ms. Agustina Iskandar explains,
“In 2018, Indonesia participated in “World Cleanup Day” where we involved 7.6 million volunteers,”
For those who are not familiar with World Cleanup day, it is a coordinated worldwide clean-up action taking place on a single day. It was first held in September 2018, with 17.8 million people from 157 countries and territories participating.
“The result in Indonesia was awesome — the number of people who joined the movement was the biggest among all participating countries. And by the end of the day, we had gathered 14 million kg of waste.”
However, it also highlighted some problems.
“Even though we collected a lot of waste, we found that we didn’t have enough means to deal with them. There aren’t enough waste treatment facilities in Indonesia. We think that to solve the waste problem in Indonesia, we also need to take a more sustainable path for bringing changes in the long-term. I believe the collaboration between the government, private sector and the people is necessary to realise this.”
Iskander also explained the difference in approaches.
“When we organised World Cleanup Day in Indonesia, we collaborated a lot with governmental organisations — since our aim was to make this event bigger, and getting as many people to be involved in it as we could. However, I think when it comes to realising the sustainable environmental plan, we need to communicate with the people more — to increase awareness and education.
“We thought the grassroots approach would be suitable for our next attempts to create spontaneous actions among people, and collaboration between all sectors.”
The Experiment For the Future
The LDI Indonesia topic on the Citizen OS platform was opened in January 2019 and is still open to the public. There are some especially active regions, such as Pulau Bintan island, which has already gathered 69 arguments as of February 21st.
“It is our first attempt and there will be some issues for sure.” For example, In Indonesia, the internet is available to only about 50% of the population, according to Wikipedia. “Citizen OS is an online e-democracy platform, so the lack of internet access is an issue.”
However, for her, this isn’t something that should halt the project.
“I think technology is the best asset for the future. I hope this project turns out to be a good example of solving a problem by making use of technology.”
Reflections
My own personal reflections on this experimental project, which I admire very much and was a pleasure to research, are that LDI Indonesia is trying to give the people a voice for collaboration — regardless of their position — for a better future for all.
This project is probably the first step for them. And their journey to find the best practice for getting involvement from the people and creating a sustainable society will continue. Awareness of the problem and widespread participation in the decision-making process seem to be the key aspects of this project. As technology becomes more readily available, it will change our lives, and influence how we realise the democratic process of decision-making.
Rie Takeuchi, wrote this article while volunteering with Citizen OS Foundation for three months, from December 2018 to February 2019.
Citizen OS Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation providing free open source civic tech and building a worldwide civic hacktivist network. The Citizen OS platform enables participative discussion and delegative voting. Ideal for e-democracy initiatives, online meetings, e-voting and petitions.
Find out more at: www.citizenos.com or follow the Citizen OS Facebook Page.
