The Indonesian Government emphasized its commitment to continuing to oversee issues related to plastic waste by holding the Indonesia Country Dialogue: Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution, officials said.
The dialogue on Tuesday was organized under a collaboration between the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment and National Plastic Action Partnership (NPAP) and Ocean Plastics Leadership Network (OPLN), ahead of the discussion of the Global Plastic Treaty at the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA) 5.2.
"This country dialogue aims to build the capacity of domestic stakeholders regarding the adoption of the global plastic agreement at UNEA 5.2. This is an important momentum for all of us considering the seriousness of Indonesia in overseeing the issue of plastic waste,” Deputy for Coordination of Environmental and Forestry Management at the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment Nani Hendiarti said in a statement issued in Jakarta on Wednesday.
The dialogue discussed several aspects of the Global Plastic Treaty, including opportunities, benefits, consequences, and responsibilities of all parties who would ratify the treaty, as well as the next strategic steps that need to be taken by Indonesia, Hendiarti informed.
The virtual dialogue featured breakout rooms, where participants could access the opening of the event, general presentations, surveys related to the adoption of the global plastic waste agreement, and videos of experts, she said.
There was also a breakout session on four framework issues, namely finance, market development and innovation, monitoring and impact measurement, and social and gender inclusion, she said.
The forum was intended to map Indonesia’s interests in the Global Plastic Treaty, Hendiarti said.
The discussion was also expected to become a general description of the interests of various stakeholders, she added.
"Indonesia's strong commitment to tackling plastic waste is so ambitious. Collaboration and global commitment are needed to move together to produce a bigger impact," she remarked.
President Joko Widodo had earlier taken a strategic step by stipulating Presidential Regulation Number 97 of 2017 on National Policy and Strategy for Household Waste Management and Similar Waste of Household Waste, and Presidential Regulation Number 83 of 2018 on Handling of Sea Waste that contains an action plan for handling plastic waste at sea for the 2018–2025 period.
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Indonesia has made numerous efforts to tackle marine trash, right from restoring Citarum River— which was earlier claimed to be the second-dirtiest river in the world—under existing policies to building plastic waste recycling facilities in several cities, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said.
"Meanwhile, to control the use of plastics, the government has issued a roadmap policy to reduce plastics by producers and encourage the growth of the recycling industry,” he said.
Indonesia joined the Global Plastic Action Partnership, a new public-private collaboration platform launched at the World Economic Forum in 2019, he said.
It became the first country in the world to launch a National Plastic Action Partnership (NPAP), a solution-driven and inclusive partnership to deal with plastic pollution, and a similar partnership scheme is currently being prepared for Ghana and will be readied for Vietnam soon, he added.
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