Tuesday, October 27th 2020, the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Diponegoro organized a webinar called ‘Progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals and Climate Change Agendas in Southeast Asia and ASEAN.’ Featuring Dr. Hartuti Purnaweni, MPA (Head of The Environmental Science Doctoral Program Universitas Diponegoro), Dr. Ir. Ruandha Agung Sugardiman, M. SC. (General Director of Climate Change Control, Ministry of Environment and Forestry), and Prof. Dr. Ronald Holzhacker (Professor of Comparative Multilevel Governance and Regional Structure University of Groningen). The event was moderated by Marten Hanura, S.IP, M.PS as the secretary of the International Relations Department Undip and responded by Drs. Tri Cahyo Utomo, MA as a senior lecturer at the Department of International Relations, Universitas Diponegoro.

The event was started with the presentation by Dr. Hartuti Purnaweni, MPA who explained the efforts made by the government in building a resilience community through a programme called PROKLIM. Regarding to the climate change issue, Indonesia as an archipelago country with a diverse climate and land area should face several threats; such as the rising of the sea levels. This condition, then, became worst as most of the Indonesian people were not aware of the water management and the deforestation issue. Therefore, the government decided to make a program called the Program Kampung Iklim or Proklim. Therefore, it was expected that this country should be able to prevent the climate change.

There was also a presentation by Dr. Ir. Ruandha Agung Sugardiman, M. SC on a video broadcast. As Dr. Hartuti Purnaweni had explained, Indonesia was a very vulnerable country to the impacts of the climate change. Hence, an adaptation and mitigation implementation was needed to prevent the climate change. One of the adaptation efforts which was then carried out by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry was by adding aspects of the climate change to the NDC document arrangement. Meanwhile, at the regional level, KLHK had been the National Vocal Point for the AWGCC, ASOEN, and AWGFCC.

The last presentation by the third spokesperson, namely Prof. Dr. Ronald Holzhacker, explained how the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations could serve as a framework for Indonesia and another ASEAN countries in addressing the inequality issue. The sustainable development goals were also closely related to the ASEAN Community Vision in 2025. Even so, the involvement of the non-state actors in ASEAN was still limited. Therefore, there were challenges faced by the ASEAN countries. Such as, shifting the internationally agreed objectives to the national institutional arrangements, fulfilling the multi-level implementations, and involving more non-state actors. After all, this event was expected to provide information for the students of the International Relations Department regarding the challenges that arose due to the climate change, how the role of the Indonesian government in facing these challenges was, and its relation to the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations and the agenda of the ASEAN itself.