RI to host climate conference

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

As a country that has already experienced the effects of climate change, Indonesia will hold an international conference on the problem this December, it was announced Monday.

Addressing a joint media conference with United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Yvo de Boer, State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar said Indonesia was ready to lead the charge on climate change issues.

Sprawled across the Equator, Indonesia's islands are threatened rising sea levels, while its farmers are currently suffering through a prolonged dry season.

Rachmat said both indicated that the threat of global warming was in need of immediate international action.

The conference, which will be held in Bali, will have around 10,000 participants, including environment ministers, from the more 100 countries who are signatories to the Kyoto Protocol.

It will be the first in a series of negotiations on clean development schemes, to be concluded with a new set of environmental agreements by 2010.

The parliaments of member countries are expected to ratify the agreements by 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, developed nations must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent on their 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

The conference will discuss financial incentives for both developed and developing countries; efforts to seek the participation of major carbon culprits like the United States; and a higher target for emission reductions.

The meeting is also expected to address forestry sector issues, which are not sufficiently covered under the current "clean development" scheme.

Rachmat said Indonesia would propose at the meeting that an environmental fund be set up to support countries that preserved their rain forests.

"If it is agreed to, we will prioritize the forests threatened by fires in Bengkulu, Papua and the Leuser conservation area," he said.

De Boer said she hoped that different interests could be accommodated at the meeting.

"It will not be easy to reach a consensus between industrialized and developing countries. But we have to start somewhere," she said.

At a 12-day conference on climate change in Nairobi last year, China and India, the world's largest developing countries, refused to be bound by emission reduction regulations.

They regard emission reduction as an economic burden because of the cost of converting to more efficient, low-carbon energy forms.

Despite several verbal commitments to clean fuel development, the United States is yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, saying it would be too costly for its economy.

The Nairobi convention was only able to agree to review emission reduction targets by 2008.

Indonesia would see to it that any agreements made on clean development mechanisms were in line with poverty reduction efforts, Rachmat said.