AwarenessBased Systems Change to Address Climate Change
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it was i think it was through this
journey that we finally able to see
really see the people who would
otherwise be labeled as
encroachers in the national park as
actually
you know you might call them forest
dependent communities or you can call
them stewards
of of the earth
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this is work that i do with my current
organization united in diversity
and realizing that i’m giving a voice to
such a vast story that is still
unfolding
i hope this story conveys how sensing
takes away your freedom not to act by
moving
that you know concept of
intersectionality
from uh just a head concept a cognitive
concept
to the heart and and then to your body
into the hands
just a little bit of context um
so we are based out of indonesia i
believe
and i feel it is a very important place
and a nation and people
to our fight against climate change
due to its sheer size of course but also
because of the tremendous amount of
biodiversity that we have
and we share this with 273 million
people
17 million of which are indigenous or
added people
and there are about 568 that we know of
and of course the home to all this is
this irrecoverable carbon
uh that resides in indonesia’s
rainforests peatlands mangroves and
oceans
and so you can imagine the complexity
that arises in such a place
i think a program like what we do on
awareness-based systems change
is critical and timely because we bring
leaders from
across sectors and really highlight that
you know your perspective
can be very different from those across
the system there’s power gap there’s
imbalances
there’s systemic injustice and and by
bringing that
not only in the classroom but also out
outside of the classroom
and also with one another using
a different kind of awareness the
awareness of the earth body and the
social body
and we use that to sense into the
complexity of the relationships of the
actors in the system
including the voiceless stakeholders
the future generations wildlife
and mother earth and our values our
highest future potentials
are all there in the system for us to
sense and feel
into so it was in one of these cohorts
in one of these programs
entered this was in 2015
and he was at the time the person in
charge of managing national parks
across indonesia’s 17 000 islands
and perhaps one question that was
constantly bothering him in that role is
that why do i keep having conflicts with
the people around the national park
in and around the national park and some
of them are indigenous peoples
peoples who we know now are at most
at when stake comes to climate
effect and so um he had some key
questions
and through through the process of
understanding and sensing into this
system deeper
he came up with these questions and i’m
not going to go through each and every
one of them one by one
but i just want to highlight that these
questions
perhaps range from the system symptoms
level
to structures but also to what can i do
and what do i need to change that source
dimension
of change and it is these questions
that he finally brought into the sensing
activities
into one of the national parks that he
managed and this is
national honeymoon it’s one of the
parks on java which is actually the most
densely populated island in the world at
140 million
people on on a piece of land the size of
new york
state and it was
in this national park there’s a group of
indigenous communities
called to call themselves casa puente
taglar almost 600 communities about 8
000
families and sensing is not about
reading reports
you know if you go back to those
questions there are probably
many studies that have been written
about them but it’s not about just
reading reports and studies
it’s about bringing yourself to the
place of most potential
knowing what being there can
teach you when you when you arrive with
an open mind
an open heart and open will and so this
is
i have the honor and the pleasure of
accompanying this sensing journey and we
arrived to a very
festive welcoming party in which he
immediately took part in
we met with the village elder i call him
elder
but he’s actually one of the youngest
his people calls him abba which is uh
the
sundanese forefather and this is his
wife
and and by being there just simply we we
you know these are things that you don’t
experience
by reading reports or looking at your
computer screen
we we know now that they have this um
great big house at the village center
or the village um square if you will
uh and the door is always open always
open for anyone it would be like
a palace but if the palace were open all
the time to everyone that comes
and the kitchen is huge and massive
and the the this uh this wood fire stove
is
always burning always putting out food
for whoever that comes to stop by
and we sat down with the elders and
we learned to listen and this is the
part i think that was
you know you have to come to terms face
to face with the pain and suffering
because um suddenly now we’re hearing
that you know there’s this
ministry and nation state that is about
70
years old imposing uh
imposing laws and outlying people who
have been
in the area for about five or six
hundred years
uh so their oldest oral history dates
back to the year 1368
and and realizing that actually
they when they ask for road it’s
not um to open up more forest
that when they ask for road is because
their women are dying in childbirth all
on the way to the to the healthcare
facility
it’s because their their children don’t
have access to good education
and it is with these understanding
that we then go into their village in
their communities to
learn more about their way of life
the roads are hand built collectively
it’s a very communal society and
everyone has a role
and everything is governed by by a
communal schedule
and we learned about the happiness of
his people
and we learned about their relationship
with rice
rice is sacred and it’s their connection
with the gracefulness with the bounty of
mother earth
and rice is sacred and even though you
have an abundance
you do not sell they only plant six
months out of the year
and they don’t plant twice even though
they could because the soil needs to
rest
and the people need to be with their
family
and every year they have a tradition of
storing their harvest and their
traditional barns every family has one
every village has one and their whole
community has this
central barn in which all of the
rice harvest gets stored into so they
essentially establish the seed bank
and science comes along and say oh
apparently
this area has the highest diversity of
wild type rice 160 varieties that we
know of and counting
we shared meal this is actually the our
second day there was pabambang’s
birthday and we celebrated with abbahan
it was i think it was through this
journey that we
finally able to see really see the
people who would otherwise be labeled as
encroachers in the national park as
actually
you know you might call them forest
dependent communities or you can call
them stewards
of of the earth right because they
inherently know that their lives their
their
their future generations are so
interconnected
with nature and that it’s in their best
interest and the futures generation’s
interest to keep it in good shape
so this is their rice barns and this is
their
rice irrigation system and they know
that
to keep water flowing from the top you
have to keep the mountain tops forested
and they have zonation system that
that’s far more advanced than what we
know about the core
uh the zoning area of national parks so
they know where to put their houses they
know where to put their um rice fields
and and vegetables they designate a
sacred
the lands that are not to be disturbed
for any reason
and which actually leads to a common
understanding
for this person who who um whose role is
to manage national parks
actually has the same goal you know
we’re protecting national parks so that
we have
this piece of land for future
generations to come
and it was this mutual understanding the
shared intention the shared awareness of
a common vision
that allows in witness by the village
elders
on the spot the agreement was reached
and and
actually uh made the gracious promise
and support that
okay we we we realized
where we stand and we need to make room
in a system
for indigenous people for other people
to coexist
and thrive and and that started with for
example
helping to transcribe their customary
laws into
into written laws and providing support
for education and health care
and access to a better more sustainable
livelihoods
and so this five years ago and i think
you know once you see it
sensing allows you to see in a way that
you cannot unsee
and it takes away your freedom not to
act i think that’s probably what
happened to baba mong because we came
back from that trip
and he actually went on
you know over the next five years to one
write the technical guidance
for facilitators under his team to work
with indigenous communities across
the nation on how to work with them so
that they can understand
since the eye-to-eye and give proper
recognition
to the stewards of the lands to manage
their own resources
and determine their own future and
is now the director general of social
forestry and
environmental partnership five years
later and he is now the person in charge
of giving
the recognition to the indigenous
communities that started
from this sensing learning five years
ago
and it is now a ministerial decree the
president of indonesia
i think this was in 2017 perhaps finally
giving recognition and allowing the
freedom of indigenous people to exist
in their land and continue to be
stewards for
future generations not just for their
future generations but for our future
generations
there’s so much more complexity behind
the story even if we did this
all right this is still a drop in the
bucket and there will still
be many many more examples of
complexities that arises out of you know
a huge
massive government system silent working
in silo and so on and so forth but
i think this at least shows one path
that
we can all do of taking ourselves out of
our habitual way of understanding the
world
and with an openness of mind and heart
and will
into places of most potential that
allows us
the courage to lose the freedom not to
act
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