Seminar “Green Cities: Balancing People and Planet”
On Thursday, 24th April 2014, three of students and one of lecturer from Faculty of Engineering (Dayu Ariesta Kirana Sari, ST, M.Sc) had attending to the seminar on the occasion of World Water Day and Earth Day 2014, which has been celebrated every year. This seminar was held in Ministry of Education and Culture, Jakarta.
Seminar, with the theme “Green Cities: Balancing People and Planet”, has four very outstanding speakers. The first speaker is Prof. Hubert J. Gijzen from Director of UNESCO Jakarta. He spoke about “Global Challenges and Post 2015 Agenda”. He said that in the future we need to produce new energy, new water, and new food. These three points will resolve any related issues in the world, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, Rebalancing C, N, P cycles, ocean acidification, and water management.
For new energy, the world is on working to make a new energy from biotechnology or existing natural source (sun, geothermal, or other). Then, for new energy, the world is on working to make urine separation and resource recovery. And for new food, the world is on working to make food with some chemical process, the thing that seems impossible or only in science fiction film.
The second speaker in the seminar is Firdaus Ali, PhD from Indonesia Water Institute that spoke about “Water, Energy, and Green City”. The third speaker is Prof. Dr. Gadis Sri Haryani as the head of Limnology LIPI that talked about “Water Crisis and Inland Water Ecosystem”. And the forth speaker is Dr. Ir. Arie Setiadi Moerwanto, M.Sc. from director General of Water Resources, Ministry of Public Works.
This seminar had participants not only from Student University in Jakarta and delegation from some institute, but also from various University from Indonesia (ITB, IPDN Jatinangor, IPDN Sulawesi Selatan, Hasanuddin University, and Brawijaya University), Bangladesh, USA, South Korea, and other countries.
Overall, this seminar gave us the knowledge that water and energy are two essential life support services and the are essential for sustainable development and for sustainable and green cities. So that, we have to take care of them for our future by balancing people and planet.
