hi, this is my first post and i am very happy to write about this.

 

Nowdays, animal exploitation case increases in many places. Humans utilize nature for their needs but they forget to take care of it  as they take care of themselves. Everyone knows that the sale of endangered animals is a crime but some people still do that because of economic needs. For example, according to the E-Paper of Media Indonesia dated September 13^th, 2022, police in Bali successfully foiled  the smuggling of around 30 turtles. There is also other information that transactions of selling turtles has reached around IDR 300 bilions per year. Between 2015 and 2022, the Environment and Forestry had recorded a total of 438 cases of illegal poaching of endangered animals that have been handled.

Hunting endangered animals is not the only one problem that we have to concern; their habitats are also increasingly being destroyet by human behavior. Again, a major environmental issue is the pollution in oceans because of platic waste. There are 1.29 tons of plastic waste enter to Indonesian ocean. This means that plastic waste dominates the issues of ocean pollution. Imagine how many  species in the ocean die because of plastic waste. Now, ocean is like a giant garbage dump which cousing many species specially many endangered species die. For instance, plastic waste is found in sea creature stomach such as turtle and whales.   

The factual description above is small  part of the story about the suffering of our natural environment. Many species do not feel safe and comfortable to reproduce. Polluted land and water no longer to be good habitats for animals. Food chains are disrupted because of species being endangered or even disappearing from ecosystems. All this damage is believed originating from the old anthropocentric perspective that still exist in modern society. A belief that humans are the center of the universe leads to exploitation without any care. Humans feel free to do anything to nature, free to take, cut down, and process without remembering to give, plant, or preserve.

As a woman from the Timor tribe (one of the tribes in the province of East Nusa Tenggara), we believe that nature is the part of the human body. The philosophy of the Timor tribe states that, “Oel nam nes on na, nasi nam nes on nak nafu, naijian nam nes on sisi, fatu nam nes on nuif,” which means: water is  blood, forests are hair, land is flesh, and stones are bones. Thus, nature is the identity of a human being; in simple terms, nature is the human body itself. In conclusion,  if any element of nature is damaged, then the human body will also be damaged.