GLOBAL WARMING :

TRI HITA KARANA AS THE PRINCIPLE FOR TAKING

SMALLER STEPS TOWARDS ONE MAIN GOAL :
SAVE THE PLANET EARTH

We have shared opinions during the IPU sessions and since this is the
Inter Parliament forum, it’s important for us as the parliamentarians to
enforce all the discussions into actions. This forum has also opened broad
opportunity between countries, between annex 1 and non annex 1 to do
further collaborations in terms of CDM or else. But let me underline that
this global warming issue can also be taken into smaller actions that
might be more realistic and easier to be applied in developing countries. It
has been done in various ways, involving many foundations such as WWF
( World Wildlife Fund ) but should we call this enough ?

This global warming issue has actually been inclusively thought of in our
Balinese Hindu phylosophy, Tri Hita Karana. It comes from the Sanksrit
words meaning the three causes of welfare and security through
relationship of : Human being with God ( parahyangan ), human being
with their fellowmen ( pawangan ), and human being with the
environment ( palemahan ). Our disharmony relationship with nature is
the main cause of the climate change since human beings are the main
factors causing the environment impairment as also reported on the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) Working Group 1
issued on 20 February 2007 in Paris.

Bali is facing the natural impact of industrialization of tourism, where

many green areas cannot be survived and have to be destroyed for the
sake of infrastructure building & modernization. Therefore, we Balinese
should hold our philosophy strongly since living in harmony is part of our
daily life. Modernization should go inline with our harmony principle.

In a broaden perspective, this Tri Hita Karana concept can also be applied
in preserving our planet. Global warming cannot be avoided, but by
increasing awareness of the impact of global warming and doing what we
can to preserve the existing environment can make a big difference for us
and for our next generation.

We have witnessed that many green areas within the cities have been
transformed into sky crapers, therefore the government must consider the
importance of a comprehensive city planning in the infrastructure
development. This issue is actually one of the big problems arise in the
developing country like Indonesia as we mostly still think of the physical

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development and consider the green areas as idle and non productive
lands.

Ecotourism is a must especially for pollutant producer countries.

Promoting rice terrace in Bali and preserving the forest are just simple
examples.

Other than this, let us not to forget that building public awareness should
be started at an earlier age, therefore we should bring this issue into
education, either formal or informal, through extra curricular activities,
ecotourism etc. Simple things can be done at school, as most students
spent many hours at school, so we can teach them to develop habits in :

• Using water efficiently.

• Using electricity efficiently especially the ones that create substances
that deplete the ozone layer such as the usage of air conditioner at
home or in the car.
• Simple waste management / garbage disposals.
• Using biodegradable washing chemicals / soaps.
• Green environment around school.

The first two abovementioned items have also been applied by many of
the hotels in Indonesia including Bali through their Save The Earth
Campaign, where guests are encouraged to converse electricity and
water. Guests are also encouraged on re use the towel in order to reduce
the usage of the soap / cleaning chemicals, since we mostly don’t use the
biodegradable chemicals due to price consideration.

Perhaps we can also look at how the AIDS campaign began to arise the
public awareness. It was hard and many resistance occurred especially
from the grass root societies but bear in mind that in developing countries
such as Indonesia, those are the major parts of our societies. So reaching
them becomes very important in building global warming awareness.
Using ICTs ( Information Communication and Technologies ) such as
television is crucial and continuous awareness on the real correlation
between global warming and the clean water crisis, dry season, tsunami,
tornado, heavy flood and avalanche, and even diseases caused by
mosquitos as vectors such as malaria and Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever
( DHF ).

The conclusions are that :

1. Tri Hita Karana is an ancient Balinese Hindu principle that is still alive
and relevant to be applied on the current issue such as global
warming.

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2. Parliament members are the key factor that have the legitimation to
speak up to the government and be able to allocate higher amounts of
national budget realization concerning this matter.

3. Budgets should not only allocated for the high image and big account
project only such as developing the renewable energies, building
power plants but should also be addressed to projects that will have
more impact in the long run such as educations and building
continuous public awareness, either formally through school projects
or non formal, through ICTs, printed medias or else.

4. Physical or infrastructure development should be done

comprehensively by allocate enough space for the green areas as the
city lungs.

5. Global Warming should be brought into public affairs in a way that they
can directly relate, not just in terms of many jargons, terminologies,
rules etc that seem so out of reach.

6. We the IPU members should take major concern on how this public
awareness towards global warming can be applied in conjunction with
the local cultures

7. Developed countries should help developing countries through various

projects either big or small by having a win win solution.

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