Indonesian Environment Min airs his green credentials

By Adhityani Arga

JAKARTA (Reuters Life!) - Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar says his green credentials include eating organic food whenever possible and occasionally riding a bike.

Witoelar, 66, will host the UN climate change conference in Bali from December 3-14 where delegates from 190 countries will gather to hammer out a new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, a pact against global warming that expires in 2012.

An architect by training, he is married to Erna Witoelar, an environmentalist and a former public housing minister.

He has spent much of his career in politics with the Golkar party and was appointed environment minister when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became president in 2004.

Q: How do you apply environmental principles in your day-to-day life?

A: Since the 1980s, I have designed a few hundreds of environmentally friendly houses. When I design, I look at the plot. Like all architects, I look where the sun comes up, where the wind falls and in my case, it's where the trees are. I design the house around the trees.

My house has a lot of ventilation, so it doesn't need a lot of air cooling.

My wife is actually the environmentalist and I am the bureaucrat, but I support her actions and I try to do what she does, like eating organic. It's often energy-efficient food because it is rarely cooked. Which means there is plenty of raw food in the house, like sashimi.