Raising Water and River Sustainability Issues: An Effort to Preserve the Nature through Children’s Stories

Abstract

Indonesian have many various tradition ways to preserve and protect the nature around them. One of the ways is by telling stories which brings a message of nature sustainability. Ancestors passed the message, moral lesson and the issues of the environment through generations from time to time through a tradition of oral story. Giving moral lessons in environmental issues in the pass was usually done by telling fairy tales of particular objects, i.e., of water and rivers due to its essential to human life sustainability. Therefore, this study aimed to reveal the important role and function of water and rivers that are passed using fairy tales to preserve the natural environment around humans. The exploration and analysis at first glance from this present study found that the fairy tales are very simple for them however it contains a lot of, messages, moral lessons and issues of environmental sustainability. It served as a carrier of a moral message to maintain, conserve and preserve the natural environment in which they live. This result of this study also showed that teachings about moral and messages of environmental issues had been known for a long time in Javanese tradition.