Surabaya, East Java (Antaranews Jatim) - Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini will be a speaker at the 12th Asian-Pacific Cities Summit to be held in Fukuoka, Japan, on August 1-3, 2018.
The summit, organized by Fukuoka City and the UN-Habitat ROAP-Fukuoka, aims to promote sustainable urbanization and seeks to solve urban issues through measures, such as inter-city collaboration.
"At the forum, I will be a speaker during two sessions, the first in the UN-Habitat session related to environmental management and (the second is) related to the handling of natural disasters," Rismaharini informed reporters in Surabaya on Wednesday.
Surabaya has received the Adipura Kencana environmental awards for cleanliness and green awareness almost every year for its innovation in environmental management.
The city has developed a waste-to-energy system and 32-33 percent of the green open spaces of the city's total area.
City planning expert from the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh November Prof. Johan Silas assessed that Surabaya has better environmental management in comparison with Singapore.
"Compared to Singapore, Surabaya is better. This is because in Singapore (the environmental management) is enforced through the imposition of many fines. It is very different here," he pointed out.
In addition, the capital of East Java Province has developed excellent villages through the "Green and Clean" program. Surabaya has 28 excellent villages, which have good environmental management and economic empowerment aspects.
With regard to waste management, the Surabaya city government has established super depo to separate organic and inorganic waste in Sutorejo and Wonorejo.
During her trip to Japan, Rismaharini will also visit Kitakyushu City to follow up on the plan to grant Surabaya equipment to manage hospital waste.
She noted that the assistance from Japan had been approved, but the process of allocating the grant had to go through various stages that had to be passed, so it took a long time.
"Grant allocation is a lengthy process, but we have prepared everything. We just need to wait for the process (to finish)," the popular and outspoken mayor stated.(*)
