Aceh govt advised to rehabilitate environment

Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Banda Aceh (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has called on the Aceh provincial government to use Earth Day 2010 on April 22 as a good momentum to rehabilitate the region`s environment.

TM Zulfikar, director of Walhi`s Aceh branch, said here Wednesday Earth Day 2010 was a pivotal opportunity for individuals, corporations and governments to join more than one billion people in 190 countries who were taking action to create a global green economy.

He said forty years after the first Earth Day, the world was now in greater peril than ever.

While climate change was the greatest challenge of our time, it also presented "an unprecedented opportunity to build a healthy, prosperous, clean energy economy," he said.

He also said Earth Day 2010 could be a turning point to advance climate policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy and green jobs.

An Earth Day Network was galvanizing millions fpeople to make personal commitments to sustainability, according to Zulfikar.

Development in Aceh, he said, should have an environmental background, because the province was located in a natural disaster volatile area.

"Natural disasters such as floods, landslides, and earthquakes frequently hit Aceh because development in the province is ignoring environmental preservation efforts," Zulfikar said.

He added that in conjunction with Earth Day 2010, the regional government should make a new breakthrough to save the environment in Aceh from forest degradation.

"From Aceh`s medium-term development plan (RPJM) we see that the local government is paying serious attention to the risk of a disaster, although its implementation in the field has yet to run optimally," Zulfikar said.

Therefore he suggested that development in Aceh adhere to environmentally-friendly concept in a bid to reduce the risk of disaster in the province.

"We are optimistic that environmental rehabilitation in Aceh as an effort to improve the local people`s welfare will be realized if the Aceh government uses Earth Day as a momentum to do so," he added.
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