Gunung Walat, Sukabumi – Fieldtrip of AFoCo Educational Field Practice Program in Indonesia from Seoul National University (Korea) had been conducted on 20-21 April 2013 in GWUF.
The theme of this field trip in GWUF (HPGW) was Challenges and opportunities of ecosystem services and ecotorism development in Indonesia. This field trip was followed by 7 students from Seoul National University (SNU) and 2 persons from Centre for Climate Risk and Opportunity Management in Southeast Asia Pasific (CCROM-SEAP) IPB.
This field trip constituted a part of cooperation activities between AFoCo Training and Monitoring program (Seoul National University), CCROM-SEAP IPB, and PT. SG Consulting (on behalf of KORINDO) which had developed cooperation agreement in the field of research and education, with the hope that this cooperation would contribute something for developing model of forestry environmental services and ecotourism which are profitable for local people community,and being developed through partnership between government, private institutions, academicians and people community.
“The objective of this field trip is seeking information concerning people’ initiative in developing environmental service and ecotourism which have been running in GWUF. The participants also wanted to learn the initiative of local community in developing this ecotourism through partnersip between stakeholders, namely between government, private institutions, local community, academicans and non government organization (NGO)”, said Ratna Patriana who acted as organizer of this event from CCROM-SEAP IPB.
“The SNUstudents also want to know how ecotourism students in Indonesia develop ecotourism in the future. The SNU students want to compare the ecotorism paradigm in Indonesia with that in Korea, because Indonesia and South Korea, in terms of ecotourism and environmental services are contextually similar “, she adddd.
Activities during the field trip were tracking in the forest of GWUF for learning the existing tourism potential, exploring the natural karst cave in GWUF, having discussion with local community who conducted tourism in GWUF, following the presentation of Dr. Tatang Tiryana (one of the GWUF director) concerning ecotourism in GWUF, following presentation by Ms. Wulan (teaching staff of Ecotourism Vocational College of IPB) concerning Introduction of Indonesian forest and Indonesian Ecotourism, and following presentation by Jihyea Kim who desctibed ecotourism in South Korea.
“I have come to Gunung Walat University Forest for an excursion , and I came with my team from Seoul National University, we have been here for two days and we have conducted tracking around the forest. We also visited the cave site”, said Jihyea Kim one of t the participant.
“I was very glad to be here, I have a lot of fun, meeting the Indonesian people and meeting the students from IPB. I also had a great time tracking into the forest, exploring the areas. I’m bringing back new experiences, new thought, new ideas that we can implement in our Korean forestry programme”, she explained further.
“I want to thank you for this programm for having us here and giving us the good time and I hope, I will come back again and also help promoting this area as a forestry environmental services”, she finally added
[hap]
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