Monash University, Indonesia and University of Maryland co-host workshop on bridging grassroots sustainability and policy action
Participants gather for a group photo before the networking session
BSD City, Tangerang – Monash University, Indonesia, in collaboration with the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy (UMD), convened a multidisciplinary workshop exploring how grassroots sustainability practices intersect with top‑down climate policy. The half-day event brought together students and scholars to examine how government-led strategies often overlook the contributions and lived experiences of indigenous and local communities.
Held at Monash University, Indonesia’s BSD City campus, the workshop engaged 35 students from Monash's Master in Public Policy and Management (MPPM) program alongside graduate students from UMD’s bi-annual winter class, "Social-Ecological Systems, Environmental Policy, and Sustainable Development in Indonesia." The event provided a platform for emerging policymakers from Indonesia and the United States to build cross-cultural understanding and strengthen academic exchange.
Speakers (from left to right: Perdana Roswaldy, Matthew Regan, Thomas Hilde and Aichiro Suryo Prabowo) listen to opening remarks by Jane Jacobs, Vice-President of Research & Academic Affairs and Professor in Urban Design at Monash University, Indonesia, who underscored the importance of addressing complex sustainability issues through interdisciplinary and international collaboration
Scholarly perspectives on sustainability
The workshop was co-chaired by Aichiro Suryo Prabowo, Assistant Professor of MPPM at Monash University, Indonesia, and Thomas Hilde, Research Professor at the UMD School of Public Policy. Both emphasized that sustainability must be understood not only as a policy design challenge but as a phenomenon deeply embedded in local social and ecological contexts.
Aichiro highlighted the difficulties policymakers face when applying the subsidiarity principle to sustainability governance, while Tom encouraged students to remain attentive to contextual diversity and avoid projecting their own assumptions onto policy analysis.
Additional speakers contributed perspectives from history and sociology. Perdana Roswaldy, Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of Monash's Master in Sustainability program, discussed how gender dynamics and community structures influence environmental outcomes, and stressed the importance of historical comparative methods.
Matthew Regan, UMD doctoral candidate and historian at the U.S. Department of State, presented historical cases demonstrating how societies have mobilized localized collective action during periods of crisis and noted how historical narratives can both connect and unequally position communities across time and space.
Thomas Hilde addressing Monash and UMD students during his session on ecological perspectives of communities’ sustainability efforts and top-down policymaking for addressing climate change
Student dialogues and collaborative learning
A student-centered discussion session formed the core of the workshop, allowing participants to compare case studies from Indonesia and the United States. The dialogue examined instances where bottom-up initiatives reshaped central policies and considered moments when top-down interventions inadvertently disrupted local sustainability practices.
Sabina Puspita, Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of MPPM at Monash University, Indonesia, closed the session with a synthesis of the discussions. She proposed expanding a 5Cs framework—calibrate, contextualize, compare, connect, and comprehend—to examine the relationship between grassroots sustainability efforts and policy decisions, taking into account structural conditions, diverse forms of life, and the social effects of policymaking.
Students from Monash and UMD participating in the students-centred discussion session
Looking ahead
In his closing remarks, Yessy Arnold Perangin Angin, Vice-President of Education and Associate Professor in Business Innovation at Monash University, Indonesia commended the workshop as a model of international partnership advancing shared learning and collaborative problem-solving. He encouraged participants to continue exploring the issues raised as part of their academic work and community engagement efforts.