BALI, Indonesia, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Cultural experts and regional leaders gathered in Indonesia's resort island of Bali on Wednesday in the 2nd World Culture Forum (WCF), discussing ways to further enhance role of culture and civilization to support the world's sustainable development drive.
The experts shared their concepts and experiences through various WCF-related symposiums running from Oct. 10 to 14, aimed at formulating ways to align goals of global sustainable development with people's initiatives to address it through sociocultural approach.
The second WCF was intended to produce detailed ways to address "Bali Promise" document resulted from the first WCF jointly initiated by Indonesian government and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Nusa Dua, Bali, in 2013.
Bali Promise was registered as United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution no. 68/223 on Dec. 20 2013 that recognizes culture as the fourth dimension of sustainable development.
Speaking in a symposium to discuss role of cultural movement in city development, Indonesia's Bandung Major Ridwan Kamil pointed out that synchronizing history, city lay out design and cultural movement has long been applied by his administration to carry out the development in the capital of West Java province.
Bandung is Indonesia's top tour destination city that inherits many historical old colonial buildings and is strongly-backed by creative industry sourced from its resourceful residents.
Ridwan said that cultural development was an essential task to assure that development process carried out by any city administrator was conducted correctly on tracks that address sustainable development drive.
"If we only focus on the economy aspect in developing the city, it would cost the other aspects in the city and its residents' life," he said.
The UNESCO Indonesian office Shahbaz Khan said that it has set up UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) in 2004 to facilitate cities developed on creative industry basis, making them propeller agents for the creation of sustainable development for their residents.
Culture should not be merely regarded as a lifeless monument as its local wisdoms have powerful energy to support sustainable development, the head of UNESCO Jakarta office said in the symposium.
More than 1,500 delegates from 65 countries were participating in the ongoing international forum, according to the organizer.
