Al Gore to deliver lecture to 300 people in Jakarta

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sun, 01/09/2011

Nobel laureate and former US vice president Al Gore would be in Jakarta for three days, during which time he is scheduled to give 10-minute lecture before 300 training participants at the Jakarta Convention Center on Sunday.

His schedule also includes meetings with several Indonesian ministers, and perhaps President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Gore would address practical solutions that could be implemented at the grassroots level to deal with the impacts of climate change.

Indonesian business people and members of the Regional Representative Council (DPD) are also slated to participate in discussions on the hazards of climate change.

Gore’s main agenda this time in Indonesia is to train some 300 participants from the Asia-Pacific region on Sunday. The participants were selected from a field of some 1,200 candidates.

Gore last visited Indonesia to attend the 13th Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Bali in 2007.

The participants, collectively known as The Climate Project, or TCP Presenters, will then relay Gore’s presentation, which is based on his award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and his recent book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, to their respective local communities.

“Climate change education is of key importance to people living in the Asia-Pacific region, many of whom face the very real risk of becoming displaced in the coming decades,” Gore said on his official website www.theclimateprojectus.org.

“TCP Presenters can help educate and inform citizens to take an active role in their communities to help solve the climate crisis.”

This will be the first training session conducted by Gore in Indonesia. The occasion was co-organized by The Climate Project Indonesia (TCPI), which was established in 2009.

Indonesia is categorized as one of the nations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change with millions of citizens living along coastal areas and employed in the agriculture sector, which had experienced the most immediate impacts of extreme weather changes.

National Council on Climate Change (DNPI) chief Rachmat Witoelar said that Gore’s visit could inspire more Indonesians to take real action to deal with impacts of climate change.

“We are facing a lack of awareness of climate change issues among the people,” Rachmat told reporters on the sidelines of the first training day for climate presenters on Saturday, adding that adequate public awareness could help push the government to make environmental preservation the foundation of future economic development.

“Indonesia needs to change the paradigm on economic development by taking the environment and climate change impacts into account, or else development would not be sustainable, he said.

TCP Indonesia manager Amanda Katili Niode said that public awareness had been on the rise since the establishment of the TCPI.

Indonesia currently has 71 presenters directly trained by Gore in Australia, the US and China. There are presently over 3,000 Gore-trained presenters in 57 countries.

“The TCPI has so far recruited some 1,000 volunteers who would spread climate change issues to their communities,” she said. Volunteers are local community members who have received instruction from Gore-trained presenters.

One of the presenters elected from Jakarta, Nana Firman, who is also an urban designer and environmental activist, expressed hope that Gore’s training would help her initiate change in Indonesia to avoid the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change.

“I plan to be an advocate for this work at this important time,” she said.

Former US vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore delivering his speech at the Asia-Pacific summit for the climate project in Jakarta on Sunday. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)

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