ABSTRACT
After introducing the fieldwork in the major port city of Surabaya, in East Java, this chapter describes the “forced volunteering” (paksarela) approach to EE in Surabaya, beginning with the vital role played by the Mayor, Ibu Risma. Then the chapter examines the cooperation among government agencies, an environmental NGO (hereafter TENGO) and its dynamic leader, Mas Rudi, and schools in enforcing a city-wide approach to EE. On the face of it, this coordinated approach looks very much like Agrawal’s “environmentality” in practice. While acknowledging that Surabaya is indeed becoming “clean and green”, particularly through green leadership, the chapter questions the effectiveness of this approach to EE in enabling young people to solve environmental problems and understand the complex interactions between socio-economo-political systems and the natural world. Young people have little power in this society. Finally, the chapter examines the free labour of children to gauge if the deployment of schoolchildren in environmental services should be seen as exploitation, the exacerbation of inequalities or as “responsibilising” children towards environmental citizenship.
