20: Educating the Future’s Leaders

Indonesia

A Climate Pollinator story by Sierra Ross Richer

Planting trees is part of the curriculum for students at the Masehi school in Kudus, on the Indonesian island of Java. “The rate of forest destruction in Indonesia is a really big number,” said Moses Livingstone, chaplain at the school and the pastor of Gereja Kristen Muria Indonesia in Kudus, the church that runs it. “We train (the students) how to plant trees, in our school and also in their homes.” 

Logging and deforestation for agriculture and mining are widespread in Central Java, as in most of the country of Indonesia. According to Greenpeace, Indonesia has lost over 70 percent of its intact forest in the last 50 years, over 74 million hectares (the Indonesian government puts the estimate closer to 50 percent). National deforestation rates have fallen in the last couple of years, but in the coastal city of Kudus, the effects are already severe. 

“Almost every river in our country starts in the mountainous areas which are rainforests,” Moses said. Now because of the deforestation, in the summer season, the water is less, and in the rainy season, the giant flood will come.” 

This past December and January, over 1,500 Kudus residents were displaced from their homes temporarily by flooding. Over 150 took shelter in a church near the affected area.

Moses believes the environmental issues are a result of national policies. “Deforestation happens massively because of the regulations of the government, especially the past government,” he said. “They give concessions to corporations to do… mining (for coal, nickel, gold, bauxite and oil), farming and palm oil plantations.” 

In addition, poverty leads rural communities to log the forests around them and clearcut land to grow cash crops like corn. 

The Mahesi school is the only Christian school in Kudus and serves 1,150 students from kindergarten through senior high. At Mahesi, Moses said, “We (know we) cannot easily affect the government, their regulations and such things, but we believe that if we build a new generation with a new mindset… we hope that in the near future, they will become the important people in our country to… affect the regulations of the government.”  

About 12 years ago, the regional Mennonite church put together a curriculum to teach church members and school students about creation care. 

“We have a responsibility to conserve God’s world,” Moses said. “We have to make it sustainable because God has created this world really good.”

“We believe this is a very big opportunity for us to equip (young people) with a Christian worldview, especially in environmental issues,” Moses said. 

The need for a new generation of political leaders is made clear by the city’s response to recent natural disasters like floods. 

Right now, the local government is doing little to mitigate flooding or help those who are impacted. “In some sense, we believe that the local government, they conserve the disasters,” Moses said, “because if the disaster hits this area, then the funds for the refugees (donated by relief organizations), they have opportunities to get some.”