Topic Area 2: Water and Environmental Sustainability

Water and Environmental Sustainability: Think Outside The Sink


Provision of an adequate quantity of clean water has been a matter of concern since the beginning of civilisation. Besides drought, as stream has always been the recipient of wastes discharge from human activities, be it domestic sources, industrial or agricultural effluents or mining process water, the massive increase of industrial productions accompanied by high growth of large urban populations has led to severe water pollution problems for over the last two centuries. Such situation was found to be even worse in many of the lesser developed countries and some of the megalopolises with unbridled population growth and uncontrolled industrial development. Indonesia, no exception, has been suffering and hardly struggling to face those related problems for over the last two centuries.

Severe conditions occurred even worse since there were some failures identified occurred at the wastewater treatment plants in resulting standard effluent due to various reasons. Based on the investigations of some rivers in Indonesia by Research Center for Water Resources (Pusat Penelitian dan Pengembangan Sumber Daya Air) as the authorized institution under Ministry of Public Works, in 2004, most rivers in Java Island were identified over reaching the water quality standard. Moreover, about 70% of the streams/rivers in Indonesia were recently reported on the national daily to be highly polluted due to either industrial or domestic wastewater. While during rainy season, due to significant land use change, inappropriate drainage system, and weak solid waste management, flooding is still a crucial issue at all cities in Indonesia including Bandung City.

A proactive action is therefore needed to communicate the above water problems to stakeholders; in this case students and locals are preferred. Hence a workshop entitled “Think outside the sink” is designed to discuss, evaluate, and criticize the water and environmental issues occurred in Bandung City and learn from the practise in coal mining of PT. Pamapersada Nusantara as example.

Topic Area 1: Global Terrorism

Global Terrorism: Altering Insecurity, Preventing Terror

International terrorist activities have been growing concern within international societies after a significant number of attacks and bombings in the beginning of 21st century. Despite its various backgrounds, ideologies, and motives, terrorism has grown into a scale society and nations cannot imagine. States and nations are working together to tackle this escalating phenomenon. And in this respect, societies take a prominent part since they are the ones who directly involved and become victims of the terror.

As a part of the society, students are the ones that have great interests in domestic and international affairs and so does its implications to the society which they live and grow up in. With such complexities as transnational affairs, the phenomenon of growing terror has been a great concern for students. Students are the ones who are educated and expected to take a great part in preventing a new terror to rise. With different cultural background, different disciplines, different experiences, and different perspectives to see terrorism, students from various part of the world can share their experiences, feelings, and ideas on how they see terrorism and how they perceive the greater idea to combat terrorism and prevent the new one to rise up above.

Realizing that students are the one that expected to take a significant part in preventing and combatting terrorism in the grass-root level, Parahyangan Catholic University is being urged to facilitate and accommodate students from all over the world to engage a fruitful discussion and share their ideas and feelings on this issue. In this globalized world, it is not enough to only see an issue domestically or only see it through one perspective. In line with our agenda to promote the concept of global citizenship and peace, Parahyangan Catholic University wants to raise the awareness of students especially our students to be more aware of the phenomena and issues happen around them and happen all around the world. Moreover, by sharing and discussing, students can enhance their insights and can enrich their experience.