Jakarta (ANTARA) - Waste management will be encouraged under the Climate Village Program to support the efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environment and Forestry Ministry.

The Ministry's Garbage, Waste, and Toxic and Dangerous Materials (PSLB3) Management Director General, Rosa Vivien Ratnawati, emphasized that this a form of real action that affects people at the grassroots' level.

"What we prioritize is figuring out how climate villages, totalling around three thousand, can manage waste well," Ratnawati noted at a virtual press conference here on Wednesday.

"From this waste management, most of which is organic, we can then calculate the contribution from reducing greenhouse gas emissions," she stated.

Emission reduction in the waste sector is being targeted in accordance with the Indonesia Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) document, Ratnawati noted.

The ministry aims to integrate several programs, so that waste management, if done well in villages included under the Climate Village Program along with residents around the Social Forestry area, could contribute to reducing carbon emissions.

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Meanwhile, PSLB3 Directorate General, Climate Change Handling Directorate General, Social Forestry Directorate General, and Ministry's Environment Partnership have started to work on the field to build villages included in Climate Village Program recently, she revealed.

One of the activities conducted was building waste management competency, starting from upstream to downstream management, such as building a trash bank and compost house.

However, she pointed to several lingering trash bank-related issues in the Climate Village Program.

These issues pertain to less-than-optimal institution and trash bank that became passive due to the absence of an off-taker or a party that requires materials from the trash banks, such as the recycling industry.

The 30-percent and 70-percent target to reduce waste will be utilized as a standard for all climate villages, Ratnawati noted.

"We want this Climate Village Program to be an example for other places. Hence, we concentrate on the Climate Village Program, then it can be calculated," she affirmed.
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Translator: Prisca Triferna V, Fadhli Ruhm
Editor: Suharto
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