"I do believe that the press has a critical role in shaping our dialogue towards stakeholders engagement in promoting green initiatives and public`s views and informed opinions on climate change," he said during the launching of the "Second Round Green Investment Towards Innovation and Productivity in Indonesia" campaign in Jakarta on Wednesday night (March 27).
Witoelar said the roots of climate change are anthropogenic, hence the man-made problems need to be unmade by man. Thus, media has significant role to harness the knowledge, power and interest of the public to be more aware of the climate change problems.
"The climate change problems are made by man and should be solved by man. However, this is not necessarily common knowledge. This is where the role of the media is very strong," he said.
The media will be able to educate and promote the important issues of climate change both from the top-down and the grassroots. Hence, stakeholders of all levels rely on the partnership of the media to spread the message of climate change problems and solutions to the citizens in the language that the public can understand and digest, he explained.
"So, we hope to continue this great educational and informative partnership with the media and press corps," he said.
On the other hand, Chairman of Indonesia Chief Editors Forum Wahyu Muryadi, also known as the Editor in Chief of Tempo Magazine, said honestly that climate change issues, particularly on the green investment campaign, is not assumed as an interesting issue, comparing to other issues like politics, corruption, or high-end scandals.
"Commonly, we use term `a sexy issue` for these kind of issues. To tell you the truth, the green issue is a less sexy thing for us," he said.
But, Muryadi added the involvement of the Indonesian media in the campaign of Second Round Green Investment Towards Innovation and Productivity in Indonesia would be a commitment to increasing the interest of the media to cover green issues as well as inform and spread it to the public.
"We are now in the era that a good news is a good news and the green issue is one of the good news in order to reduce the rapid climate change," he said.
"This would be our challenge as Indonesian media," he added.
(A060/A014)
Reporter: A Fitriyanti
Editor: Jafar M Sidik
Copyright © ANTARA 2013
