Indonesia Minister Sees Consensus at Climate Talks

JAKARTA - Indonesia's Environment Minister said he believes the United States and Australia, which have not signed the Kyoto Protocol, will reach a consensus on a new climate deal at December's UN talks in Bali.

The Bali meeting in December is meant to spell out a way to curb emissions after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires, in an attempt to slow global warming and effects such as flooding, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

Many people see the meeting of environment ministers as a last chance to launch talks on a new world agreement on measures to cut emissions of climate changing carbon gases.

"I see a ray of hope that in Bali we can set the foundations," Rachmat Witoelar told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday, adding that he had recently held positive talks with representatives from the United States and Australia, which are non-signatories to the Kyoto Protocol.

"Australia and the US, it seems they don't mean any harm. They just want to have some things re-arranged," he said, adding that the two countries were responsible for 40 percent of the emissions.

Earlier this week, Witoelar said Indonesia wants to be paid US$5-$20 per hectare not to destroy its remaining forests, for the first time giving an actual figure that he wants the world's rich carbon emitters to pay.

He did not give further details of the cash-for-forests proposal, or say how Indonesia, which already has difficulty with law enforcement due to corruption, would ensure that its forests were not destroyed under such a scheme. During the Bali conference, participants from 189 countries will hear a report on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation (RED) -- a new scheme that aims to make emission cuts from forest areas eligible for global carbon trading.

Indonesia has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres (91 million ha), or about 10 percent of the world's remaining tropical forests, according to rainforestweb.org, a portal on rainforests.

But the tropical Southeast Asian country -- whose forests are a treasure trove of plant and animal species including the endangered orangutans -- has already lost about 72 percent of its original frontier forest, a lot of it to palm oil and pulp wood plantations.

Story by Adhityani Arga

Story Date: 11/10/2007

All Contents © Reuters News Service 2007

Read more... Sphere: Related Content