Prominent policy makers gathered at Jakarta Campus during SBM ITB Public Policy Forum to talk about the current pressing policy challenges (11/7/2017). Moderated by Deputy Director Jakarta Campus, Yudo Anggoro, the forum discussed various policies; economic policy to alleviate poverty, climate change and sustainable development, policy reform in urban development, and policy delivery. Taking the theme of “Responding to Current Global Issues,” this forum is a collaboration between SBM ITB and School of Public Policy, University of Maryland.
The forum was opened by SBM ITB’s School Advisory Council, Heru Prasetyo, who highlighted the importance of policy research and study at SBM ITB to assist government and policy makers to make better and sound policies. In the first session, Lukita Dinarsyah Tuwo, Secretary of Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, spoke about government efforts to eradicate poverty in Indonesia. Those efforts include the development of infrastructure to reduce logistics cost, the issuance of license to land owners, and offering free visa to 169 countries to boost the numbers of tourists to visit Indonesia. The next speaker, Gita Wirjawan, brought economic policy to alleviate poverty to the new level. The former Minister of Trade suggested that basically there are four policies to increase people’s welfare: creating jobs, providing social security, opening access to capital, and opening access to basic needs. Gita also shared his confidence that now as a Trillion Dollar economy, Indonesia is on track to become the fifth larger global powerhouses by 2030.
The next policy to be discussed was climate change and sustainable development. Heru Prasetyo as a former Chairman of Indonesia’s REDD+, shared his experience on how to convince the Norwegian Government and other international agencies to put their fundings for Indonesia to reduce its CO2 emission. As a result, in 2010 the Indonesian and Norwegian governments both signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) to contribute $ 1 Billion to be paid based on verified emission reduction. The next session, Wicaksono Sarosa, former Executive Director of Partnership for Governance Reform (Kemitraan) provided some facts that the rate of urbanization keeps increasing and some challenges are waiting for us in the future related to this trend. Pollution, clean water, sanitation, and waste treatment are some of the challenges. However, urbanization also offers some opportunities as it positively correlates with the GDP growth. Dr. Sarosa warned policy makers that even though urban areas are developing, balancing focus to rural areas is necessary to create social wealth.
Summarizing the discussion, Neneng Goenadi, Country Managing Director of Accenture Indonesia, shared a survey conducted by UN Global Compact and Accenture to more than 1,000 global CEOs about the future global challenges. The survey concluded that the understanding of Sustainable Development Goals are crucial for both business leaders and policy makers to navigate policies to create sustainability in the future. Closing the forum, Bob Orr as the Dean of School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, concluded that multi-stakeholders collaboration is important to respond to current global issues.
