Youth workshop: challenges and opportunities for future leaders

Two keynote speakers who delivered speeches at this event were Tri Purnajaya, Director of Development, Economy, and Environment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Sinta Saptarina Soemiarno, Head of the Center for Environment and Forestry Generation Development, Human Resources Extension and Development Agency, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

In her presentation Sinta described the challenges and opportunities of the youth. She mentioned that the youth actually have concerns on climate crisis, food, economic, literacy, democracy and technological disruption, but they are still vulnerable to disinformation. Thus, in order to be able to get involved in sustainable forest management, they need to empower and educate themselves and next step is to engage in larger forum or organization. With often limited resources and lack of support, they need to establish collaboration among themselves and with other parties including the government, the private sector and to get involved in many activities such as dialog forum, partnership, or joint-initiatives.

Before having a discussion with the panel team, several youth representatives had a chance to give presentation, or shared experience and aspiration such as the representative from Tropenbos Indonesia landscape in West Kalimantan, Salma, who gave a presentation about general issues they face, where the decision making, natural resources management, culture and customs are still dominated by elders and the youth’s role is still very limited. After participating in YEEHA, the West Kalimantan team plans to share experiences by organizing a youth camp similar to that in Palu for youth in their landscape, so that they can also develop capacities, for example related to skills in the fields of communication, management, documentation, mapping, information technology and journalism.

Besides Cora, other resource persons were Ita Natalia, Head of Capacity Development Program, the Samdhana Institute; Wiene Andriyana, Technical Analyst for Environment Unit of UNDP; Diah Sulistiowati, Communication and Education Team Leader of WWF Indonesia; and Reny Juita, Community Forestry Partnership Coordinator of RECOFTC Indonesia. Facilitating the discussion between the panel team and the youth was Rosalien Jezeer of Tropenbos International.

From the presentations of the panel members, the youth gained a lot of learning and information, as conveyed by Wiene from UNDP who informed that to be able to become volunteers in institutions under the UN, now young people have their own quota, so they don't need to be afraid to compete with the older generation. Diah from WWF Indonesia shared about youth programs at WWF such as Volunteers Panda Mobile, Youth Campus Activists, and the innovative competition they have introduced to reduce plastic waste. Ita from Samdhana also shared about their activities that try to promote intergeneration well-being and bring about a transition from an extractive economy to give priority to healthy and living lands, as well as empowering indigenous peoples and local communities to mainstream customary and local solutions.

Indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) in Asia face many challenges including marginalization, limited access to education and resources, and threats to their cultural heritage and traditional ways of life. Despite these challenges, young generation of indigenous people have an abundant knowledge, traditional skills, and a deep connection to their forests, environment, and natural resources. Their role is very important for the future of their society and environment. They are the ones who will be the future leaders of their landscape.

With such critical roles, empowering youth becomes very important. According to Cora, during the presentation the youth have told the audiences the richness of indigenous cultures and their creativeness which are also their strength. “We need the youth; we need the indigenous cultures and knowledges,” she said. Therefore, she told the youth that what have been learnt at school which often very rationale, very non-emotional and very dry, need to unlearn and re-learn to refine what is not right, what is often harmful to the environment. The youth have to go back to learn from their landscape, to re-learn how to interpret, how to know about their landscape, how to understand its ecosystem, its social system, and its cultural system.

It has been proven, that high education is not always in line with high contribution to the nature. Many countries in the world with highest education are the biggest producers of CO2. So, instead of only developing the left brain, Cora said that developing the right brain is essential. It is quite true that dreams, cultures, creativity, and arts are all important for young people to embrace to live in peace and harmony with nature. “Understand your places, understand your strengths, create and market local arts, bring people to your landscape, for ecotourism, develop business models, think landscapes and act landscapes,” she said.

Another capacity, Cora highlighted, is the social capacity where the youth should be able to identify the stakeholders and the actors in their landscapes, and to engage them in a dialogue. The moments of engagement with the stakeholders and the actors of the landscape should not only use to identify issues and to find technical solutions, but also to talk, to even quarrel, and to finally come up with creative ideas together.

Last but not least, Cora reminded the youth to learn institutional capacity from their experiences in their own landscape. According to her, the youth also need to enter politics, even though they may not feel comfortable. The youth need to build network, to lobby, to do advocacy, to infiltrate into bureaucracy, and play roles so that they can build not only a “Theory of Change” (ToC), but also a “Practice of Change”, by understanding their landscape and their standing in their respective landscape.