There are a little over two weeks left to apply for the Indonesia Winter Session course (October 1st deadline). PLCY 689I: Complex Social-Ecological Systems, Environmental Policy, and Sustainable Development in Indonesia (traveling to Bali, Flores, Sumatra, Java), December 29, 2019 - January 22, 2020.
The course summary can be found further below in this email.
Applications for the course can be made at UMD’s Education Abroad webpage (MyEA): http://ter.ps/
Graduate students and undergraduate seniors with advanced standing from UMD or other universities may apply. This three-credit, multi-disciplinary course is open to all specializations and departments.
Note that admissions are competitive.
Course fee:
The course fee ($3230) covers in-country transportation (flights, buses, vans, bicycles, boats), lodging, group meals, group events and activities, travel insurance, and UMD administrative fees. Students are primarily responsible for this course fee, international airfare, and personal expenses during the trip. Students do not pay UMD tuition in addition to the course fee.
The course fee ($3230) covers in-country transportation (flights, buses, vans, bicycles, boats), lodging, group meals, group events and activities, travel insurance, and UMD administrative fees. Students are primarily responsible for this course fee, international airfare, and personal expenses during the trip. Students do not pay UMD tuition in addition to the course fee.
Tuition remission applies for GAs - check with your adviser.
Scholarships:
We are pleased to offer four $1000 Indonesia Policy Course
Contacts:
Tom Hilde, Professor and Director: thilde@umd.edu
Matt Regan, Associate Director: mrgregan@gmail.com
Adriane Michaelis, Assistant Director: michaelis.adri@
Tom Hilde, Professor and Director: thilde@umd.edu
Matt Regan, Associate Director: mrgregan@gmail.com
Adriane Michaelis, Assistant Director: michaelis.adri@
Summary of the course
Indonesian place names like Bali, Java, Spice Islands (Maluku), and Sumatra resonate with exoticism for many Westerners. This historical image has its roots, perhaps, in the country’s great and unique diversity and complexity. The archipelago’s 17,000 islands comprise one of the most diverse countries on the planet – biologically, ethnically, and linguistically. Indonesia is home to at least 600 languages, 300 ethnic groups, one of the three great remaining tropical rainforests, and one of the richest, most biodiverse marine reef systems in the world. Indonesia is a young country, having declared independence from the Netherlands in 1945, but nonetheless is today the world’s largest majority Muslim nation, third largest democracy, fourth largest country by population, and one of the biggest emerging economies. Indonesia continues to grapple with how to hold its bursting diversity together in a single, modernizing nation in a way that also firmly confronts the issues of economic development, climate change, multiculturalism, democratic autonomy, good governance, inequality, and biodiversity conservation. As such, the country is emblematic not simply of its historically exoticized uniqueness, but of the complex global problems we all face in the 21st century. This graduate-level international development and environmental policy field course takes a complex systems approach to the interconnections between Indonesia’s environmental challenges and development strategies with a focus on the interface between local governance systems and global policies, especially in the face of climate change. Understanding that most such challenges involve multiple stakeholders, we study how ground-level problems are mitigated or exacerbated by national and global government policies and where local efforts may better inform policy, paying special attention to indigenous systems and what they can teach us about sustainable development, livelihood security, and climate policy.
Visiting several of the main islands of Indonesia – Bali, Flores, Sumatra, and Java – the course focuses on:
Visiting several of the main islands of Indonesia – Bali, Flores, Sumatra, and Java – the course focuses on:
- Indigenous systems of environmental management and understanding such as the complex adaptive subak system of rice terraces, irrigation, and water temples in Bali.
- Forest conservation and its place in climate change mitigation and adaptation, including deforestation and the expansion of oil palm plantations, carbon emissions from forest and peatland burning, wildlife habitat conservation, indigenous and local forest management, and REDD+.
- Coral reefs and marine protected areas in the famed Coral Triangle, which comprises some of the healthiest remaining reefs on the planet.
- Local governance and adaptation measures, the country’s decentralization policy, and democratic development and human rights.
- Discussions with leading government officials, top research experts, local farmers and fishermen, and NGO and IGO leaders, with intensive meetings in Jakarta and Bogor.
Course faculty
Tom Hilde is a research professor in the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, Associate Director of International Programs, and Senior Fellow in the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). Before coming to UMD, he taught at New York University, directing the Environmental Conservation Program there as well as the Applied Philosophy Group. He has produced books and articles on environmental and international development policy and philosophy; climate change adaptation; food systems and land use change; international agreements; human rights; and sustainability and complex adaptive systems. He currently works on collaborative projects in the Western Amazon and Indonesia, including a book on resource frontiers and climate change. For a large part of his childhood and parts of adulthood he lived in Asia, including Thailand, Japan, and Taiwan, and has traveled throughout the continent as well as in Africa, South and Central America, and Europe, having also lived in France for three years. He is a former Fulbright Senior Scholar (Venezuela) and Safra Network Fellow at Harvard University.
Matt Regan is a PhD student at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy researching a dissertation on democracy and culture in Southeast Asia, focusing on the “Asian values” debate. He holds a B.A. in history and an M.A. in modern European history from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where his research focused on the history of the biological and social sciences and European interpretations of Asian thought and culture. His research interests include the ethics of global development, sustainable development, and Buddhist philosophy. He has toured Mexico with a Thai traditional dance group, served on the organizing committee for the Dalai Lama's 2011 visit to DC, and spent the last several Januarys in the Indonesian jungle, despite being totally unsuited for that kind of thing.
Adriane Michaelis is a PhD student in the University of Maryland’s Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation research focuses on the continued development of oyster aquaculture alongside public oyster fisheries in the United States, in order to better understand the social and ecological implications of privatized oyster fisheries. Adriane earned her B.S. in anthropology-zoology from the University of Michigan and her M.S. in marine biology from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She has worked as a field biologist for the National Audubon Society, managing coastal bird sanctuaries in North Carolina, and as lab manager of an oyster research and restoration monitoring lab at the University of Maryland. Her research interests include social-ecological systems, sustainable fisheries, and participatory resource management. In her free time, Adriane can usually be found near water and/or wandering with her two dogs.
Matt Regan is a PhD student at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy researching a dissertation on democracy and culture in Southeast Asia, focusing on the “Asian values” debate. He holds a B.A. in history and an M.A. in modern European history from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where his research focused on the history of the biological and social sciences and European interpretations of Asian thought and culture. His research interests include the ethics of global development, sustainable development, and Buddhist philosophy. He has toured Mexico with a Thai traditional dance group, served on the organizing committee for the Dalai Lama's 2011 visit to DC, and spent the last several Januarys in the Indonesian jungle, despite being totally unsuited for that kind of thing.
Adriane Michaelis is a PhD student in the University of Maryland’s Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation research focuses on the continued development of oyster aquaculture alongside public oyster fisheries in the United States, in order to better understand the social and ecological implications of privatized oyster fisheries. Adriane earned her B.S. in anthropology-zoology from the University of Michigan and her M.S. in marine biology from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She has worked as a field biologist for the National Audubon Society, managing coastal bird sanctuaries in North Carolina, and as lab manager of an oyster research and restoration monitoring lab at the University of Maryland. Her research interests include social-ecological systems, sustainable fisheries, and participatory resource management. In her free time, Adriane can usually be found near water and/or wandering with her two dogs.
