Visions of Nature in Indonesia

This project is a collaboration between several institutes and universities in Indonesia and the Netherlands, among which Centre for Connecting Humans and Nature. In this project, we investigate to what extent and how Indonesian people’s cultures, including religions, influence their knowledge, attitude and behaviour toward nature drawing on the Humans and Nature (HaN) scale. This scale has been developed by the CCHN and is used in researches in The Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada and Vietnam, but not yet in Indonesia.

The research project aims to explore visions of human – nature relationship in Indonesia, and to test whether religion is a factor in this relationship. The research will be conducted in ten locations, five on Java (Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Bandung, Jakarta) and five outside Java (Aceh, Jambi, Samarinda, Bali, Kupang). In each location, 100 respondents will be selected.

Frans Wijsen of the Radboud University is the main applicant. Frans Wijsen has been engaged in scientific collaboration with Indonesia since 1994. He was main applicant and principal investigator of a SPIN sponsored project on Religion, Civil Society and Conflict in Indonesia. He is a member of the steering group of the Netherlands-Indonesia Consortium for Muslim-Christian Relations, and of the Living Labs Water Indonesia Platform.

The project has started with a workshop and currently our colleagues in Indonesia are collecting data.