President Prabowo Calls for Research to Tackle Forest and Land Fires, Advance Energy Development, and Accelerate Vaccine Development

President Prabowo Subianto, on Tuesday (10/27), held a meeting with the Head of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Arif Satria, at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta. During the meeting, the Head of BRIN submitted a report on the progress of several strategic research projects, including forest and land fire management, alternative energy development from palm oil waste, accelerated research for vaccine and herbal medicine, and utilization of technology to address waste issues.

“The President continues to monitor forest and land fires and consistently emphasizes the importance of research results to solve the problem in the short, medium, and long terms,” the Head of BRIN said.

To address forest and land fires, BRIN has collaborated with the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), Ministry of Forestry, and Indonesian Air Force to implement Weather Modification Operations (OMC), including dry ice operations. Besides short-term management, BRIN also conducts medium and long term research, including developing fire-propagation models to anticipate future forest and land fires.

“The President also emphasized the importance of medium term and long term research on how to anticipate the future, including identifying fire-propagation models so we can anticipate them in the future,” he said.

In the energy sector, the Head of BRIN reported the potential for transforming palm oil waste into biogas and electricity. Arif said that palm oil processing liquid waste, or Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME), and empty fruit bunches (EFB), can be converted into electricity with a capacity of approximately 3.9 gigawatts.

“So, currently, we import approximately Rp97 trillion of LPG per year. With the availability of biogas that can be converted into gas cylinders, I think this will be one of our energy solutions going forward,” he said.

In the health sector, the Head of BRIN reported the research progress on a malaria vaccine, with four under-developed vaccine candidates. President Prabowo has ordered an acceleration of the research process, hoping vaccine development can be completed three years earlier than expected.

“The President has ordered an acceleration of vaccine research. We hope that the research can be completed three years earlier than expected because of the full support of the President for the production of this vaccine, especially the malaria vaccine,” said Arif.

He further explained that the malaria vaccine development could become Indonesia’s contribution to the world, especially in combating parasites for which no vaccines, such as Plasmodium vivax. Besides vaccines, BRIN is also developing herbal medicine research to strengthen national drug self-sufficiency.

“Currently, BRIN has 19 herbal medicine candidates to be included in the phytopharmaceutical category. So, some of the drugs at BRIN are still at the OHT (Standardized Herbal Medicine) stage. Now we want to move towards phytopharmaceuticals,” he said.

On the waste issue, President Prabowo is pushing to accelerate the implementation of research-derived technologies so people can use them directly. The head of BRIN said his agency will collaborate with the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology to empower universities to help with village waste management.

“The President has given directives to implement these household- and village-level technologies immediately. BRIN is not responsible for production. We only create prototypes, but we ensure that the prototypes we create are beneficial and can be used by the people,” he said.

Arif emphasized that implementing these research results is expected to support the ASRI- Aman (Safe), Sehat (Healthy), Resik (Clean), Indah (Beautiful) movement launched by President Prabowo while ensuring national innovation delivers real benefits to the people.

“So, we can truly implement the ASRI movement from the President properly, as expected,” said the Head of BRIN.

President Prabowo’s policy directives call for saving forests, converting waste into energy, and producing vaccines quickly, emphasizing that benefits of Indonesian research must reach the Indonesian people faster. (BPMI of Presidential Secretariat) (JAS/MMB)