On February 1, GGGI Indonesia moderated the “Paris Agreement and its implications on National Development” session at the Indonesia Climate Festival.

Organized by Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry on February 1-4 in Jakarta, the Climate Festival aimed to raise awareness among development stakeholders and the general public about the outcomes of the Paris Agreement achieve at COP21. The Climate Festival included high-level discussions, seminars and exhibitions demonstrating the use of sustainable power resources, in an effort to catalyze a move forward with real climate actions at national, provincial and district levels.

The session was moderated by GGGI Country Representative for Indonesia, Anna van Paddenburg, and featured a high-level panel that included Wahjudi Wardojo from Indonesia’s Nature Conservancy, Christophe Bahuet, UNDP Country Director, Moazzam Malik , the United Kingdom Ambassador to Indonesia, Timor Leste and ASEAN, and Georg Witschel, German Ambassador to Indonesia, Timor Leste and ASEAN.

The session participants all agreed that sustainable growth is key to mitigating climate change and that the Paris Agreement should not end “on-paper” nor at a political affairs level. The session helped to make clear the importance of sustainable, inclusive development as a key component in the Government of Indonesia’s (GoI) efforts to tackle climate change and its impacts.

“Everyone should be part of the solutions and this requires greater involvement of local communities, as also shown in Paris Agreement where commitments are nationally-determined, and not internationally negotiated,” noted Ambassador Malik.

Christophe Bahuet of UNDP further acknowledged that “climate adaptation agenda should be combined with real environmental action such as disaster risk reduction and forest protection.”

“While all parties are very excited with the results of COP 21 Paris, there are however there are plenty of actions to take in order to realize the points from the Paris Agreement,” added Anna van Paddenburg.

The session and participation at the Climate Festival will support GGGI’s ongoing green growth work in Indonesia. The National Agency for Development Planning (Bappenas), the monitoring body for implementation of sustainable development in Indonesia, has been working with GGGI for the past two years to demonstrate how the GoI’s planning instruments could achieve green growth outcomes that are pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-poor and pro-environment.

This GGGI-GoI collaboration, with the provinces of Central Kalimantan and East Kalimantan serving as pilot programs, will continue to 2020, when it is expected that the provinces’ Long–term development planning has incorporated green growth principles in the sustainable development efforts.