The first session for the three-part webinar series of Climate Leadership Program (CLP) opened on September 16, 2020 with over 90 international participants joining and taking their first step on the CLP journey!

The CLP Session featured an orientation program and a session on climate leadership.

For the opening program, Professor Kemas Kurniawan, Chairman of Jakarta Research Council, and Geun Hyeong Yim, CityNet Chief Executive Officer (CEO), welcomed the participants. CEO Yim underscored the importance of CLP as a regional platform for ideas, local innovations, and international city cooperation to mitigate impacts brought about the climate change.

The main speaker for CLP Session 1 was Frans Sugiarta from United in Diversity and IDEAS Indonesia. He discussed on the need for a tri-sector leadership for overcoming sustainability challenges and divisions. There is a growing disconnection between people to people (social divide), people and planet (ecological divide), and people and divine (spiritual divide), he added. A step towards bridging the divide requires a transformational mindset and process.

Mr. Sugiarta proposed for a Theory U framework that will help leaders to introduce changes into a rather complex, traditional system. Theory U proposes for prototyping, which means introducing small but impact-driven practices to influence change.

Mr. Sugiarta also noted that the current pandemic has accelerated the society’s shifting process from a creative-based economy to digital economy. It is now important to develop skills in managing data, in particular as to how to select relevant data and not to be stuck in analysis paralysis mode. Leaders need to be disciplined in maintaining organic mindset and collaborative attitude.

The presentation of the speakers can be found below.