Earth Day Environmental Art and Music Festival 2008 Performers

Emerald Starr - Environmental Speaker

click to enlarge

Emerald Starr Biography

Emerald was trained by Al Gore and The Climate Project to present his Global Warming slide show in December, 2006.

From December 2006 – March 2008 Emerald has presented the slide show more than 20 times to approx. 2500 people including the Indonesian Minister of the Environment and President Designate of the UNFCCC, Rachmad Witoelar and his key staff, and most recently to the Indonesian Miners Association in Jakarta.

Arriving in Bali in March, 1987, Emerald participated in a cultural exchange program with Prof. Pennell Rock and Sutan Takdir Alisjabana at his Center for Arts in the Future at Toyabungkah, Lake Batur. In 1989, having fallen in love with Bali, Emerald began building a vacation home on the Ayung River gorge in Br. Begawan, Gianyar. As tourism and development in Bali was expanding at an alarming rate, Emerald decided to join with friends to create Sacred Mountain Sanctuary (SMS), a resort/retreat in the Karangasem, east Bali mountains with cottages made from bamboo, alang-alang and stone. He joined with Linda Garland and the Environmental Bamboo Foundation (EBF) to develop a treatment for the bamboo which would make it resistant to insect attack which turned out to be a huge success. The Vertical Soak Bamboo Treatment Process was born and a detailed “how to” manual is now available online courtesy of EBF for all to benefit from this work. At the same time, Dr. Mark Nelson of the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation (PCRF) designed 9 WasteWater Gardens®, natural plant based, chemical free wastewatertreatment systems for SMS. In the years following, these organic wastewater treatment systems were tested diligently and finally approved and certified by BAPEDAL, the Indonesian Govt. health department. IDEP Foundation based in Ubud, is now building these systems in Aceh, Bali and other places in Indonesia.

In the year 2000, Emerald’s family joined with A.A. Made Djelantik and his son A.A.G. Widoer Djelantik of the Royal Family of Karangasem to begin restoring the Tirtagangga Water Palace. Emerald as liaison between the Arimathea Foundation and the Karangasem family’s Yayasan Amerta Jiwa, consulted with the family for over 6 years during the restoration process and is still active today.

Emerald continues to be active in education and raising awareness for the health of our planet and the vital need to reduce Green House Gas emissions worldwide.