Community education and partnerships for sustainable development: a way forward for Indigenous Asia

Asian Indigenous community voices are largely overlooked and underrepresented in global sustainability dialogues, and this is a cause for concern, especially since Indigenous communities in so many regions mostly live below the poverty threshold. Asian Indigenous communities also continue to grapple with basic human needs, such as lack of access to quality education, healthcare, electricity and clean water. Community education for sustainable development and partnerships for sustainability are considered as means to address these shortcomings on a global scale. Here we discuss transformations in learning in community education for sustainable development. We first highlight the positioning of Indigenous communities within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), and the extent to which Asian Indigenous community perspectives are accounted for within the United Nations (UN) agenda. We then discuss the sustainability issues surrounding the Indigenous (Orang Asli) community of Malaysia, and its implications for the socio-economic wellbeing of the community, as well as the extent to which community education for sustainable development and partnerships for sustainability can help address these shortcomings. We highlight key challenges faced in implementing community education and partnerships for sustainable development within the Orang Asli community and provide insights on ways in which these challenges can be collectively addressed through local community-academia-industry-local government-NGO partnerships.