Biodiversity is Future of Our Earth Life

Jakarta Convention Centre (JCC), was became a spotlight area in June 3-6, 2010, due to an Environmental Day Exhibition and Conference (Pekan Lingkungan Indonesia, PLI) held. The Vice President of Indonesia, Mr. Budiono opened PLI, where in his remarks he stated that  public awareness is very important in implementation of green and sustainable development. Vice President also emphasize that biodiversity not just be a slogan but should have an impact to community and future generation. PLI 2010 is the 42nd-PLI event hosted by Ministry of Environmental (MOE), where this year came along with theme “Biodiversity is Future of Our Earth Life”. PLI-2010 also link to CSR (corporate social responsibility) theme, agenda and  campaigning. “The right keyword to prevent environmental degradation is start right now and don’t be late to take action” said Mr. Budiono.  He also remain that environmental degradation problem was very huge and escalating and need a publicity movement to enforcing and prioritizing of integtrated-solution.  “We have to collaborate and built trust each other” said Budiono.

The Water Supply Policy Formulation and Action Planning-Facility (WASPOLA Facility) in collaboration with the National Water Supply and Sanitation Working Group (Pokja AMPL) and the National Planning Agency (Bappenas), held a national-level training on Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) development facilitation (the training), placed in Holiday Inn Hotel, Bandung West Java Province, in 24-27 May 2010.

The 4-days training is attended by 54 participants representative of  12 provinces in Western Indonesia, including: Province Aceh, North Sumatera, West Sumatera, Jambi, Riau, Riau Islands, Bengkulu, Bangka Belitung, Lampung, South Sumatera, Banten and West Java) where each provinces are represented by local government officer, non-government organization (NGO) and university.

Following a series of disease outbreaks across the world, developing countries which still have some pockets of poverty with low implementation of sanitation, have adopted measures to boost the health quality of their people to create resilience on possible similar attack and other infectious diseases.  With better environmental condition, it is expected that the countries can also reduce huge financial loss they suffering due to poor sanitation, which can hamper their efforts to build infrastructure to attract much-needed foreign investment. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), bird flu (H5N1) and swine flu (H1N1), are among the outbreaks have been faced by the countries in the globe, particularly the developing countries.

The National Water Supply and Sanitation Working Group (Kelompok Kerja Air Minum dan Penyehatan Lingkungan, Pokja AMPL), led by Ministry of National Planning, collaboration with WASPOLA Facility,  held a national workshop to kick off the national water and sanitation information center (Pusat Informasi Nasional Air Minum dan Penyehatan Lingkungan, PIN AMPL), in Jakarta, 13 April 2010. The workshop, took place at Hotel Akmani  Jakarta, was attended by around 50 participants with various background, such as: Pokja AMPL members, Ministry of Health (MOH), Ministry of Home Affair (MOHA), Ministry of Public Works (MPW), Ministry of Environment (ME), Ministry of National Planning (MNP), UN Habitat, World Bank, Unesco-IHE,  Press (Kompas Daily, Suara Karya, Media Indonesia, Jakarta Post, Suara Pembaruan, etc), Radio ARH 68H,  PAMSIMAS, LIPI (Research Agency), WASPOLA Facility, USDP, WES-Unicef, STBM, CK-Net.