What Could Indigenous Youth From Indonesia Teach the World About Climate Change?
By Claudia Brauer |Versión en español aquí
What could a group of indigenous teenagers and young adults from Indonesia teach the world about climate change? A lot!
For starters, they can teach commitment, purpose, creativity, vision, and engagement. They can teach us how to learn fast and apply new knowledge to concrete projects that have a direct impact on our environment.
This is one of my conclusions after reading about the impressive results of the Youth Leadership Camp for Climate Change (YLCCC), which took place in Indonesia in February 2017 to “build the knowledge and skills of 150 Indonesian students aged between 17 and 25 years old to act on climate change.”
Additionally, the winners of the YLCCC participated in a Tribal Climate Camp in the United States, receiving training on forecasting, monitoring, and assessing potential impacts, and engaged in strategic planning exercises and discussions on climate resilience, community engagement and climate policy.
“We learned so much about community engagement…Learning is a process. To combat climate impacts, individual actions are good, but working in a team is better. So let’s start engaging others!” — The YLCCC 2017 winners
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has defined that
“Climate change poses threats and dangers to the survival of indigenous communities worldwide, even though indigenous peoples contribute the least to greenhouse emissions… Indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, due to their dependence upon and close relationship with the environment and its resources…” (source)
It is therefore crucial to indigenous populations to take a front seat in the responses to climate change and the actions to increase resilience in preparation for future climate change scenarios. In Indonesia, students who participated in the YLCCC are now starting to apply the knowledge gained to make a difference on climate issues today.
This combination of youth, direction and climate change concerns allows these future indigenous leaders to gain a global perspective on the matter while at the same time they build the skills and gather the information that will help develop the tribal policies needed to minimize the negative impacts of climate change on their communities.
Participants have started rolling out social media campaigns through videos and e-posters, organizing forums and events, delivering presentations in primary and secondary schools, raising awareness of the Earth Hour and other relevant initiatives among community members, contributing articles for local newspapers, participating in radio programmes and tree planting, among others.
We must remember that these young people of 2018 will become the leaders of 2030 and they have already taken theory to action by developing projects to teach environmentally sustainable practices, to build the resilience of farmers, to engage others on renewable energy topics, and even to raise awareness through radio messages. These students from all over Indonesia now have a deeper knowledge on climate change and understand the importance of climate action. They now have the tools of communication and will be able to “become actors of change in their communities, through project development and implementation.”
The United Nations states that
“Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories..have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live… [They] share common problems related to the protection of their rights as distinct peoples.” (source)
It is therefore essential to further the training among indigenous populations on climate change and its impacts on agriculture and energy, marine life and fisheries, and the forestry sector. But in order to build true knowledge and capacity to take action on climate change, it is also essential to build confidence and communication skills for the 21st century and to promote the exchange of ideas and practices in peer learning forums to enable future leaders to continue engaging in these topics.
Taking theoretical concepts to actionable projects requires the involvement of a multiplicity of experts on different dimensions of climate change, as well as exposure to different ways to deal with the challenges. It is fascinating to see how these teenagers and young adults, working as participants in interconnected teams, are able and available to address climate change in their daily lives.
They are now at a point where they not only understand but also address the impact of the climate changes that they have already observed in their communities. It is their commitment to action and the plans they have developed to implement such commitments that strikes a cord on what we, the older adults, should also be doing.
Indigenous Youth Leaders are setting a path that is clear, concise and doable. It is time for us to follow their lead and learn from them. Three excellent examples follow:
- Sukma Impian Riverningtyas: “Engaging Youth to Address Climate Change”
- Aditya Pradana: “Building the Resilience of Farmers in Central Java”
- Ms. Saraswati: “Teaching Environmentally Sustainable Practices and Recycling to Primary School Pupils”
“It is better to work collaboratively in preserving the nature. All organizations, all tribes, all countries, all of us are citizens of the Earth. All of us have to be responsible in taking care of it.” — Ms. Sukma Impian Riverningtyas
Further reading:
About UN CC:Learn
UN CC:Learn is a partnership of more than 30 multilateral organizations supporting countries to design and implement systematic, recurrent and results-oriented climate change learning. Through its engagement at the national and global levels, UN CC:Learn contributes to the implementation of climate change training, education and public awareness-raising.
