Consisting of a thousand island and sea area, it makes sense that Indonesia owning an agroforestry, terrestrial and marine mega biodiversity. This mega biodiversity supposes to support our live system where nature and human having each other. Sadly, in this millenial era, anthropocentric perspective with latest technology approach is dominating every corner of our life. Most of Indonesia people keep talking about how technology has made our lives easier with justification to create a better circumstance for human life as developing country. Without any hesitation, they build or achieve something with technology by destroying a nature and its biodiversity, and called that as progress. Let's see, a fish bomb trend in fisheries sector everywhere in Indonesia, but fortunately we don't have to worry now because from now and several years ahead we have a really assertive fisheries ministry (Susi Pudjiastuti), flaming a forest to create a land for cultivating a palm tree and else.
Purwokerto, my hometown, currently facing the big issue about biodiversity massive decline. Recently, there is a lot of protests that points the non-eco-friendly geothermal activity which runs by power company from Indonesia. The company build the installation in a conservation area in Slamet Mountain and also deforested the main area of Slamet mountain. Water contamination is one of the direct effects of this activity that harms the local society around this area.
As a biology student, I've participated in biodiversity conservation program and also have a community that works on biodiversity conservation. My community and I have put a lot of attention on this issue because of the status quo of Mountain Slamet itself as major ecological and biodiversity boundaries. Improving my knowledge about environmental monitoring, and also my skill for leading a conservation project in huge scale is the main idea of joining YSEALI Academic Fellowship. But, I hope to get a new perspective about how we can engage effectively with government to solve this kind of issue (if possible). By discussing with other fellows that going through the different case and also circumstance can help me to create further matrix plan and resolution to resolve my hometown issue. I also propose to have further elaboration project with other YSEALI fellows to make a biodiversity movement using social media approach that will give a clear contextualization to local society about biodiversity condition in each region.
An Essay by Ardo Ramdhani