ENVIRONMENT FOR INCLUSION IN SCHOOLS CURRICULUM

In a bid to boost the awareness of young people in protecting the country’s ailing environment, the government plans to include a green subject in the school’s curriculum.
Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta and Education Minister Muhammad Nuh signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Monday to formulate a design for an environment
curriculum.
“It is also an effort to focus on preventive actions to protect the environment,” Gusti said Monday.
He argued that the government had so far focused on repairing, taking measures to restore the ailing environment.
“Repairing measures are more difficult because we also face tough resistance from businesspeople who think most about profit.”
The two ministries agreed to set up a working group to design the green curriculum for primary schools to universities.
“If we can teach 50 million students about green issues, it would be easier for us to campaign for a healthy environment.
“Students could also be effective campaigners to protect the environment,” he said.
The 2009 Environmental Law mandates the Environment Ministry protect and manage the environment to ensure a healthy environment.
The law clearly stipulates fines including to ministers if they fail to supervise environmental protection.
Promoting a green curriculum was included in the 100-days agenda of the two ministers.
Gusti’s office organizes an an-nual competition on eco-friendly schools.
Indonesia, home to more than 200 million people, experiences repeated natural disasters from floods, landslides to water crises, believed to arise due to the poor environmental conditions.
The Environment Ministry has issues dozens of regulations to stop the environmental destruction but has not become effective due to weak law enforcement coupled with poor public awareness on the environment.
Gusti admitted that his office faced complicated problems in enforcing the law.
“How can we push people to obey environmental law if our office violates it,” he said.
He was referring to the Environment Ministry office, which is located a few meters from the river
bank area that is prohibited from construction under the environmental law.
“My target is we must relocate this office to other areas or renovate it as a green office building, promoting energy and water efficiency,” he said.
Gusti made the remarks during a half-day workshop on green building criteria as stipulated under the 2009 ministerial decree.
The decree requires all buildings to apply low carbon and conserve water to help mitigate climate change, one of hottest topics on the planet that experts warn can seriously threaten world population, mostly in developing countries.
This is due to the increase in global temperatures that can trigger the melting of ice causing the sea level to rise.
“All countries, including Indonesia should take part in combating climate change.
“The most effective way is by involving young people through education,” he said.
Indonesia, which is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, has promised to take action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent, including from eliminating deforestation, peat land and increasing energy efficiency to tackle the climate change.
Gusti said that students could play an important role to help promote energy saving to meet the country’s target of 6 percent emission cuts from the energy sector.