BIANKA or Bincang Karya is a serial-webinar held by the Indonesian Embassy in Washington D.C., USA through the Attaché for Education and Culture and this 9th series was held successfully on 10/27/2020. The 9th series of BIANKA carries the theme of Environmental Awareness: A Global Reflection and chaired by Prof. Popy Rufaidah, the Education and Cultural Attaché.
The recorded live event of BIANKA Seri-9 can be accessed in the following link http://bit.ly/fb-watch-bianka9
This series of BIANKA was attended by Prof. Anna M. Gade who is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Environmental Studies and Associate Dean for Research & Education in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. In this opportunity, her presentation was focused on the Nelson Institute of UW-Madison.
Nelson institute has two forms of postgraduate program. The first program is what they call the Professional Program. This program is aimed at job seekers in the environmental sector, for example in the sector or water conservation. The first major they offer is Environmental Conservation or EC. Another major is Water Resource Management, where students will be involved in collaboration and partnership with an institution in Wisconsin. Finally, they have a new department in the field of informatics that provides new technology in spatial data development strategies such as GIS. Meanwhile, the second major or program is Environment and Resources which offer Masters and PhD levels for this program.
The second speaker, Prof. K. R. Reddy, the Director of the School of Natural Resources and Environment, the University of Florida, talked about some potential opportunities at the University of Florida. During his presentation, Prof. Reddy talked about the School of Natural Resources and Environment which are supported by 12 colleges. Our charge of the school at the primarily offer the academic program meaning that we offer under graduate program. We offer two degrees on undergraduate program in Environmental Science. One is Environmental Science track which is the BS degree, Bachelor Science Degree. Second degree id Bachelor of Arts degree which is Environmental studies. Research areas emerging the environmental issues also discussed in his presentation. Right now, University of Florida works with Memorandum of Agreements with 160 countries until they continuously developing this MoUs so that they can exchange ideas and they have study abroad program where students came from different countries.
This series of webinar also invited Priza Mahendra, a PhD Student of Environment and Resources, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. In this occasion, he explained about three things namely his doctoral research, what can be learned from United States’ waste management, and the current condition of air pollution in Indonesia. Mahendra’s doctoral research is in the fields of ER where he uses three approaches including geography, anthropology, and urban planning. Talking about waste management in the United States, the issue about renewable energy become the weakness of United States’ waste management. Thus, Indonesia should move forward beyond that by trying to create an effective recycling system to change the waste into energy. Regarding to the current air pollution in Indonesia, he hopes that Indonesia, together with other countries, can move to Euro 6 standard so that the pollution can be decreased.
On the other hand, Hermudananto, a PhD student at School of Natural Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, presented about forest for the future. He focused his presentation on two points, global forest trends and what he is doing in his research now. Indonesia and United States play important roles regarding to their forest areas. Unfortunately, with its large forest cover, America itself contributed to the second rank for carbon emissions in the world in 2018. Likewise, Indonesia ranked eighth in fact in the tenth rank in contributing to carbon emissions. Hermudananto also talked about RIL (Reduced-Impact Logging) which is, based on some literatures, are able to reduce soil compaction, reduce logging waste even increase profits and also store more carbon stocks. However, only 10% of 250 companies implement RIL. Therefore, he is doing a research whose topic is Research-policy-practice Gaps in the Promotion of Reduced-Impact Logging in Indonesia: Construction of a theory-of-Change for Forestry Concessions.
The last speaker was Dr. Ir. Katharina Oginawati, MS. from Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty of Institute Technology Bandung (ITB). Dr. Oginawati discussed about The Citarum river basin which is arguably the most polluted river in the world. She explained that small industries contribute mostly on the water pollution of this river because of the heavy metals in the upper Citarum River. Dr. Oginawati also discussed about various studies done in 2018 and 2010 which studied about other heavy metals contained in Citarum river basin.