JAKARTA WINS 'NATIONAL WINNER' OF ONE PLANET CITY CHALLENGE AND 'THE MOST LOVEABLE CITY' TITLE 2018
Jakarta, July 19, 2018 - The city of Jakarta has once again won the title of 'National Winner' in the One Planet City Challenge (OPCC) and for the first time the title of 'The Most Loveable City' from the We Love Cities campaign, organized by WWF. In the OPCC, Jakarta passed a jury of international experts who were impressed by the city's comprehensive approach to tackling climate change and its commitment to increasing the use of renewable energy sources. As the national winner of the One Planet City Challenge, Jakarta was nominated to become the global winner of the One Planet City Challenge. The One Planet City Challenge (OPCC) was organized to scale up city governments' efforts to address climate change and contribute to meeting the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement. The OPCC is the largest and longest-running climate change-related competition of its kind in the world.
The city's strategy to significantly reduce CO2 emissions includes allocating a realistic budget for the use of renewable energy sources in a number of city government infrastructures, reducing transportation emissions through the use of low-emission fuels, and expanding mass transportation fleets and facilities. The city of Seoul in South Korea-the global winner of the Earth Hour City Challenge in 2015-has become a role model for cities in Southeast Asia and many other rapidly growing cities around the world. Seoul set ambitious initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10 million tons and meet 20 percent of electricity needs independently by 2020, which led the jury to award the title of 'Global Capital Hour' to Seoul City.
"The challenges we face in combating climate change, protecting ecosystems and natural resources know no boundaries. Cities play an important role in determining the direction of the world's sustainable development through the use of renewable energy, and Jakarta is an inspiring example of a city that takes this challenge seriously," said Rizal Malik, CEO of WWF-Indonesia. With the world's urban population set to double to 6 billion by 2050, addressing climate change cannot be done at the national level alone, but requires more active participation at the city level.
From the implementation of the We Love Cities campaign, the city of Jakarta succeeded in achieving the most public support with 164,954 interactions on social media and the website www.welovecities.org, 42,000 interactions adrift of the city of Pasig, Philippines which ranked second. During the campaign period that lasted from May 7 to June 30, 2018, the city of Jakarta also managed to obtain 4,464 public suggestions where the most suggestions (31%) reflected public expectations for better transportation arrangements. Meanwhile, in second place, 24% of public suggestions featured public aspirations for better waste management.
"The We Love Cities campaign is in line with the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government's policy of promoting a movement-based approach to developing Jakarta. The DKI Jakarta Provincial Government appreciates the cooperation of the parties, especially suggestions for improvement from citizens for better development of the city of Jakarta," said Anies Baswedan, Governor of DKI Jakarta Province.
One Planet City Challenge 2018 was followed by 132 cities from 23 countries that were willing to accept this challenge. Meanwhile, the We Love Cities campaign was followed by OPCC finalists, namely 50 cities from 21 countries. A total of 8 cities from Indonesia were listed as OPCC participants this year, namely Jakarta, Bogor, Balikpapan, Malang, Probolinggo, Tangerang, Bekasi and Banda Aceh. In mobilizing the participation of these cities, WWF partnered with ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability which also facilitated the use of the carbonn Climate Registry (cCR) as a medium for reporting city performance.< br />
In relation to the topic of 'sustainable transportation', which was the highlight of this year's One Planet City Challenge, the OPCC judging panel gave special recognition or 'Special Mentions' to Bogor City for its strong and diverse approach to realizing a sustainable city transportation system.
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For more information, please contact:
- Dewi Satriani, Communication Manager, WWF-Indonesia | dsatriani@wwf.id | +62811910970
- Margareth Meutia, Footprint Campaign Coordinator, WWF-Indonesia | mmeutia@wwf.id | +628158812844