Kids tell adults: Don't mess up our future

Kids tell adults: Don't mess up our future

Warief Djajanto Basorie , Contributor, Jakarta

"Don't turn our Earth into a garbage dump!" Yuichi Morimoto's
simple plea resounds like a thunder clap.

The 13-year-old Japanese boy is sending a clear and strong
message to the world's grown-ups not to pass on a damaged and
depleted planet to their children and succeeding generations.

Morimoto was one of 15 students who spoke at a recent
international workshop in Okayama, a medium-sized city 140 km
west of Osaka, Japan.

Participants from 10 nations met to develop multimedia tools
to promote education on sustainable development, such as posters,
media clippings and e-learning packages.

The workshop was sponsored by several Japanese non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) including the Okayama Topia for
International Contribution (OTIC) and the Japan Council on the
United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development
(UNDESD), in collaboration with the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

One of the key agreements reached at the 2002 World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg was to support the use of
education to pursue sustainable development.

To this end, a scheme to implement an educational program on
sustainable development will be presented on Oct. 19 by Aicha Bah
Diallo, UNESCO assistant director general for education, to the
United Nations General Assembly in New York.

If the General Assembly adopts the scheme, the UNDESD will
commence on Jan. 1, 2005, headed by UNESCO. The program will
first be launched internationally, and to be followed by national
launches across the world later in the year.

Sustainable development was conceived in the 1987 Brundtland
Report, and is the concept of making people aware of
environmental issues and how they may act, so the Earth's limited
resources are managed properly for continuous future use.

In regards use -- or misuse -- of natural resources, mankind's
situation today is no bed of roses.

According to a UNESCO paper, 25 percent of people in the world
live in abject poverty, 50 suffer malnutrition and 70 dwell in
substandard housing.

In addition, 70 percent are illiterate, only 1 percent have a
university degree and 59 percent of the world's wealth is in the
hands of only 6 percent of the global population.

The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro -- which gave birth to
Agenda 21, an ambitious plan to manage the world through this
century -- and the Johannesburg world summit on education are
central to achieving sustainable development.

The idea is that the Education for Sustainable Development
(ESD) will empower people of all ages to assume responsibility
for creating and enjoying a sustainable future.

Toward this end, children play a critical role with a long-
term impact. In Indonesia, for instance, the Pramuka -- the
national boy/girl scouts -- and a number of high schools are
active in practicing and in promoting the 4Rs of wise waste
management: reduce, reuse, recycle, replant.

Meanwhile, Australian chidlren are involved in numerous
activities, such as local QllQl bushland rehabilitation.

The Okayama students in Japan, on the other hand, lead public
awareness campaigns, including a project to keep the city's Asahi
River clean and ecologically sustainable.

The students also contributed to the workshop in producing a
for-TV clip, sample feature newspaper articles, a template for
national DESD websites linked to the UNESCO DESD site
(www.unesco.org/education/desd), a creative design proposal for
e-learning, prototype how-to kit for community-based ESD,
computer-generated posters and short, snappy slogans for radio,
print media and public messages.

The Okayama students, consciously or not, provided tag lines
and pithy slogans. Apart from Morimoto's remark, 14-year-old
fellow classmate Midori Takemoto made this observation: The Earth
"is like a glass vase. Once damaged, it can never be mended".

Commenting on the children, workshop participant Anuje Sirikit
of Thailand noted their awareness of and commitment to improving
the quality of life in their community.

"They can promote ESD by informing their friends and family of
efforts made and results achieved," said Sirikit, a UNESCO
information officer in Bangkok.

Meanwhile, Lin Martin of Australia said she got the sense that
the children's awareness, with their primary focus on the city's
river, mostly concerned nature and aesthetics. Thus, they did not
have a grasp of the wider implications of unsustainable
development.

"But that was to be expected, given they have no ESD-related
learning programs in their school curriculum," said Martin, an
environmental management consultant from Queensland.

However, Martin concurred that children could make an
"enormously important" contribution in the promotion of education
for sustainable development in the long run.

As they become adults, research shows that their exposure to
environmental education and awareness in their youth will have "a
lifelong influence on their attitudes and behavior and their
capacity as involved and informed citizen,," Martin said.

Warief Djajanto Basorie teaches journalism at the Dr. Soetomo
Press Institute, or LPDS, in Jakarta. Comments are welcome and
can be sent to wariefdj@hotmail.com.