West Sumba teacher takes home Kalpataru award

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Like Sysiphus of Greek mythology, who relentlessly carries a rock uphill, West Sumba native Elan Wukak Victor has for years carried out a similarly endless task, growing trees on rocks.

The 63-year-old English teacher started by encouraging his pupils to grow trees in their schoolyard, an idea he took from school to school.

And after 30 years, Elan has planted 400,000 trees, distributed 100,000 seeds to 23 green community groups he helped set up as well as built 81 water reservoirs across Waikabubak, a barren, hilly village in West Sumba, East Nusa Tenggara.

Elan's hard work paid off on Wednesday, when he, along with 11 other environmental activists, was awarded a Kalpataru, the highest award for environmentalists in Indonesia.

Elan won in environmental conservation pioneer category, together with Amandus Kaize from Merauke, Papua, and village head Slamet Tugiyanto from Magelang, Central Java.

Kaize was honored for his efforts to grow a rare variety of plants in a protected forest controlled by his tribal community, while Slamet won for promoting multiple crops among local farmers.

One notable figure who also won the award was former West Java governor Solichin Gautama Purwanegara, for his campaign against illegal logging and on the regreening of community-controlled forests in nine regencies in West Java.

Apart from the Kalpataru awards given to environmental activists, the government has handed out Adipura awards to cities that strive to promote cleanliness.

This year, the government gave the awards to 84 cities throughout the country. More than 300 cities were nominated for the Adipura awards this year.

All five municipalities in Jakarta won Kalpatarus in the category of metropolitan city. Other cities in the category which won Kalpataru are Palembang in South Sumatra and Surabaya in East Java.

Jakarta's gain, however, was at the loss of other cities in the greater Jakarta area such as Bekasi, Bogor and Tangerang. None of these cities won Adipura in this year's contest.

Other cities which also won Adipura include Padang (West Sumatra), Yogyakarta, Denpasar (Bali), Malang (East Java) and Pekanbaru (Riau).

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in his speech before presenting the two awards that the Indonesian people did not have to wait for people in other countries to save the environment.

"Let us save the earth together with other people in this world," Yudhoyono said.

The President also called on local governments to take environmental protection into account when making policy.

He also reiterated his statement about the need to prepare for global warming's fallout.

Yudhoyono said that global warming would have a disastrous impact on Indonesia as an archipelagic country, as the rising of sea levels would drown many of the country's small islands.

"The time is high for us to find a breakthrough and brace for global warming," he said.