Regreening is being monitored by village committees in Niger. Flickr/vodkamax
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Rio may result in a commitment to shift away from fossil fuels towards new energy technologies
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The U.S. must increase its use of nuclear power and phase-out coal to reduce greenhouse gases. France has successfully deployed nuclear power on a massive scale, including successful nuclear reprocessing at the COGEMA La Hague site. (Pictured.) (Photo: WikiCommons)
Following are details of major meetings on climate change due in 2010:
BONN, April 9-11 - Session among senior officials from 175 nations to plan for 2010
-- A U.N. group on Climate Change Financing, led by Britain and Ethiopia, is due to issue "initial outputs" before the U.N. meeting in Bonn starting on May 31.
BONN, May 31-June 11 - Senior officials meet in Bonn to review texts compiling ideas for slowing global warming. A draft text will be issued on May 17.
-- Two extra U.N. negotiating sessions, each at least a week long, will be added in the second half of the year. The venues and dates of the talks are not yet known.
CANCUN, Mexico, Nov. 29-Dec. 10 - Annual talks among the world's environment ministers.
-- The pace of U.N. talks marks a slowdown from 2009, when there was also a U.N. climate summit in New York on Sept. 22.
WASHINGTON, April 18-19 - The United States holds a first meeting in 2010 of the Major Economies Forum, grouping 17 emitters that account for 80 percent of world greenhouse gases.
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia, April 19-22 - Bolivian President Evo Morales hosts a meeting of 15,000 people, including 7-10 foreign leaders, called "World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth".
SOUTH AFRICA, April 25-26 - Ministers from China, India, South Africa and Brazil meet as part of a plan to hold quarterly talks among the so-called BASIC group.
BONN, Germany, May 2-4 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel plans talks among about 45 environment ministers in the so-called Petersburg Dialogue.
OSLO, May 27 - Norway leads a meeting of ministers about protecting tropical forests, which soak up carbon dioxide as they grow.
MUSKOKA, Canada, June 25-27 - The Group of Eight industrialised nations holds an annual summit likely to touch on climate change, also a summit of the Group of 20.
SEOUL, Nov 11-12 - South Korea to host summit of Group of 20.
Negotiators from more than 170 nations meet in the German city of Bonn today at the first round of international climate change talks since last year's Copenhagen Summit ended in diplomatic recriminations and widespread disappointment.
The hastily convened meeting was organized after a number of countries, including the UK, called on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat to organise an extra summit ahead of the next scheduled round of talks in Bonn in June.
Officially the meeting is intended to tackle some of the procedural issues that blighted the fortnight-long Copenhagen Summit and to ensure that all the working groups are clear on what they have to do when they next gather in June to work on the draft treaty intended to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.
Privately, however, insiders admit that the extra round of talks will also attempt to clear the air after the fractious final hours of the Copenhagen Summit, which saw industrialised nations accuse China of deliberately blocking any chance of a deal being finalised, emerging economies accuse the US of failing to deliver sufficiently ambitious emission cuts, and many poorer nations complain that they were being sidelined by larger countries.
"The [Bonn] meeting... is going to be very important to rebuild confidence in the process, to rebuild confidence that the way forward will be open and transparent on the one hand, and efficient on the other," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer told reporters in a conference call held last week.
In addition, the meeting will attempt to set out the schedule for this year's negotiations with a number of countries lobbying for at least two more meetings to be fitted in ahead of the summit in Cancun, Mexico in November. Insiders have argued that additional negotiating time is required to avoid a repeat of the log jam that marred the Copenhagen Summit.
In another key difference with last year's negotiations, De Boer stressed that no one would be looking to finalise a Treaty within the next 12 months, reiterating his view that this year should focus on delivering a clear framework for a deal "so that a year later, you can decide or not decide to turn that into a treaty". The shift in focus effectively gives negotiators almost two years until the South Africa summit in late 2011 to finalise an agreement.
While much of the weekend's negotiations will focus on procedural issues, talk on the sidelines of the meeting will inevitably turn to how the Copenhagen Accord that was agreed last year can be used to help reinvigorate the UN negotiations and whether the $30bn (£19.7bn) of climate financing pledged by rich nations as part of the agreement is being distributed fast enough.
There will also be speculation about who will replace De Boer when he steps down after the next Bonn meeting.
Ban Ki-Moon has said he will consult with an 11-country group at this weekend's meeting about who should take up the role.
Barbados, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Ecuador, Pakistan and South Africa have all put forward nominees and the front runners are believed to be India's former environment secretary Vijai Sharma and South Africa's former Tourism Minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, who would have the advantage of hosting the meeting next year where the negotiating process is expected to culminate.
A United Nations flag is raised at the United Nations multi-agency compound near Herat, November 5, 2009. Credit: Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl
Government negotiators at the 175-nation talks urged efforts to restore trust between rich and poor nations after the December summit in Copenhagen fell short of a full legal treaty. But none announced new concessions to help.
Outside the conference center, environmentalists dumped about 4 tonnes of shattered glass on the ground alongside a sign marked "Copenhagen" and a banner reading: "Pick up the Pieces."
The April 9-11 session is due to work out how many extra meetings to hold in the run-up to an annual meeting of environment ministers in Cancun, Mexico, due on November 29-December 10.
Most want two or three extra sessions, a lower pace than in 2009, but few spoke of reaching a new treaty in Mexico with most pinning hopes on 2011 when talks will be in South Africa.
"The African group believes that our priority must be to restore trust, rebuild confidence and thereby salvage the process," said Nsiala Tosi Bibanda Mpanu Mpanu of the Democratic Republic of Congo on behalf of African nations.
Countries including Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba said there was a risk of repeating a mistake in the run-up to Copenhagen of working out a deal among only a few nations -- ignoring many in the 194-nation talks.
The long-running, U.N.-led process is meant to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.
"Small informal groups have been convened and are proliferating ... self-selected to produce an accord behind other peoples' backs," Venezuela's delegate Claudia Salerno said.
Mexico has convened informal talks among a smaller group of about 40 key nations -- many agree the U.N. process is too unwieldy with 194. The United States will host talks next week among 17 major emitters, accounting for more than 80 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions.
"We need to make progress in building compromise formulas that can be the result of an intensive and flexible process," said Fernando Tudela, Mexico's chief negotiator.
The U.N. summit in Denmark ended with a Copenhagen Accord, backed by about 120 countries, that seeks to limit a rise in world temperatures to below 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).
But it does not say how to achieve the goal and current pledges would mean temperatures rise by at least 3 Celsius, delegates say.
It also outlines a goal of raising $10 billion a year in aid for developing nations from 2010 to 2012, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020.
"I don't think any one expects a full legal deal (in 2010) the differences are just too deep," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
He said the talks could make progress in 2010 on starting a flow of funds, helping safeguard carbon-storing forests or helping poor countries to adapt to changes in climate such as desertification, floods or rising sea levels.
"Investors are looking for predictability to re-start their investments, and this is seen as the focal point where that predictability is going to come from," said Nick Campbell, chair of the climate working group at the International Chamber of Commerce.
He said the talks should agree an agenda for 2010 and milestones to ensure a route to a binding deal.
The April 9-10 conference in Bogor will feature around 200 participants, including 90 from Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia.
“This is an action-oriented conference to motivate Muslims to protect the planet from the threat of global warming,” organizing committee member Ismet Hadad said Monday.
“We want to show the world that Muslims are also doing their part to combat climate change, which affects all people regardless of religious or ethnic background.”
The conference will be held at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture’s convention center, and will be funded in part by Conservation Inter-national.
Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta and Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan are expected to open the conference.
The list of speakers includes Fazlun Khalid from the London-based Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environment Science; Muhammad Hassan from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, and Moroccan Abdelkader Allali, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The inaugural Muslim conference on climate change was held in Kuwait in 2008.
At last year’s meeting in Istanbul, the conference adopted the “Muslim seven-year action plan for climate change”.
The plan includes proposals for a more environmentally management of the annual haj, eco-friendly mosques and publishing the Koran with paper from sustainable forests.
Ahmad Fauzi, the Forestry Ministry’s liaison for the conference, said organizers expected to come up with concrete results on how to implement the proposals agreed on in Turkey.
He said one of the more ambitious targets was the “green haj”, in which haj pilgrims would be encouraged to minimize and offset their carbon footprints from the pilgrimage.
“If each of the 250,000 or so Indonesian haj pilgrims set aside US$10 toward that end, we’d have a $2.5 million fund to combat climate change,” Ahmad said.
Another measure for adoption is to phase out the use of plastic bottles throughout the haj.
“The idea is for the pilgrims to bring back an understanding of caring for creation as an act of faith,” the action plan says.
It also calls on Muslim communities to build “green mosques” through energy-saving designs.
Ahmad said the conference would help boost awareness of environmental issues among Muslims at schools and universities, and help draw up guidelines on climate change issues to be distributed among Muslim scholars.
He added the Bogor conference was unlikely to see the establishment of the planned Muslim Association for Climate Change Action (MACCA), an umbrella organization to implement the action plan to mitigate the impact from climate change.
Conservation International’s Fakhruddin Mangunjaya said the conference would declare Bogor as a green city in the Muslim world.
The conference will select 10 such green cities in the Muslim world as models for other Muslim-majority cities to aspire to.
The social organisations sponsoring the Apr. 19-22 conference have announced an alternative platform to the efforts of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-15), which ended in failure in icy Copenhagen in December 2009.
The defence of Mother Earth, championed by Bolivian President Evo Morales, has the support of more than 240 grassroots and indigenous movements, non-governmental organisations, activists and intellectuals who are calling for a charter of rights for the planet.
The main aims of the conference are to organise a world people's referendum on global warming, draw up an action plan to create an international climate justice tribunal, and agree new commitments to be negotiated within United Nations scenarios.
The agenda priorities are: climate debt, climate change migrants and refugees, greenhouse gas emission cuts, adaptation, technology transfer, financing, forests and climate change, shared visions and indigenous peoples.
"We, as activists from different social movements, define the present time by the arrogance of the United States, European Union and transnational corporations, which was expressed at Copenhagen where a very few countries attempted to impose an outcome - that was not agreed at COP 15 - to do nothing to stop rising global temperatures and climate damage," said the event announcement by leading social organisations.
These organisations include the Hemispheric Social Alliance (ASC-HSA), Friends of the Earth Latin America, the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA-CSA), the World March of Women, Campaign 350.org and Via Campesina.
Morales will formally open the conference on Apr. 20.
The organisations identify a "crisis of civilisation" that they attribute to capitalism and the "logic of exploitation, racism and patriarchy," which they see in "increased military presence and military bases in various parts of the world, and 'humanitarian' invasions and occupations" which are actually war, they say.
War, the occupation of markets and territories, and militarisation to control energy resources, water and biodiversity, are pointed out as capitalism's methods for solving its own crisis.
The World People's Conference on Climate Change will advocate the right to "live well," as opposed to the economic principle of uninterrupted growth.
In contrast to Copenhagen, where industrialised countries sought a formula for greenhouse gas emissions reductions that would not imply binding commitments, at Cochabamba it will be the popular sectors that take the lead.
"For a long time, the voices of indigenous peoples and social organisations have not been heard. Their movement has been growing underground, in rural areas and the outlying suburbs of cities," environmentalist Carmen Capriles, of the Bolivian chapter of Campaign 350.org, told IPS.
Their knowledge, as farmers or livestock raisers, means they can promptly identify the climate phenomena that their way of life and economic wellbeing depend on, she said.
Campaign 350.org is named for the 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that scientists regard as the "maximum safe limit" for the concentration of this gas, without triggering climate catastrophe.
The conference is distinguished by being "for and with indigenous peoples, unlike any other world conference held to date," Bolivian economist and environment expert Stanislaw Czaplicki told IPS.
Czaplicki was at Copenhagen as a civil society representative, and coordinated networks of young Latin American environmental activists.
"Indigenous peoples and social organisations have already formed a worldwide movement in defence of the planet, and civil society has a major role in the development of public policies," he said. However, "women and young people are under-represented," he added.
In Capriles' view, new movements capable of generating alternative proposals are needed, and she called for political will on the part of developed countries to make structural changes in their economies.
Czaplicki said there are political movements in Europe that are against models of development that harm the environment, but they do not express anti-capitalist thinking, and neither do they distance themselves from the international financial institutions.
These movements arise in countries that achieved development by environmentally harmful means, not in countries that can still choose their model of economic growth, he said.
In the case of Bolivia, policies opposed to capitalism and polluting industrialisation have not yet changed the model of extracting commodities like minerals and gas, Czaplicki said. As a result, 300,000 hectares are deforested every year, he said.
Theory and practice must come together, he said.
Campaigners for climate camp are travelling to a conference in South America - by plane
Campaigners from Climate Camp -- who helped blockade Heathrow at the height of the summer holidays in 2007 -- face claims of hypocrisy having decided to send two members to an international meeting in Bolivia to discuss ‘transnational protests’ against climate change.
The 12,000-mile round trip to the Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights conference next month involves changing planes at least twice.
The flights will generate about eight tons of carbon dioxide greenhouse gases.
The money for their tickets -- at least £1,200 for an economy fare -- is being paid for by donations to Climate Camp from people opposed to flying and airport expansion.
One of the campaigners making the trip is Agnes Szafranowska.
Ms Szafranowska, a Canadian who now lives in London, organises Climate Camp workshops and was involved in the Great Climate Swoop on Ratcliffe power station in Nottingham last October.
Police arrested ten people before the protest began on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage.
Some 1,000 people took part, and security fencing around the plant was pulled down. Police made 56 arrests and a number of people were injured, including one policeman who had to be airlifted to hospital.
Ms Szafranowska failed to answer questions sent to her by email, other than to say that Climate Camp were preparing a statement.
The group’s Press officer did not return calls.
The two activists appeared in court on March 18.
Verco was arrested while riding her bike on December the 13 ahead of a national day of action she was helping organise the following day.
She said: “A plainclothed police women jumped out at me and ... took me to an unmarked police van.
“I asked them, ‘Are you randomly picking me up?’ and they said ‘No, we hunted you’.”
Verco was then held in in isolation — in an underground carpark — for about 16 hours before being taken to Copenhagen’s Vester prison where she was held for a further 23 days.
Verco said she was charged the day after being taken to prison, but bail was refused.
“I wonder what the hell they’re going to argue because I can’t see what evidence they’ve got for these charges”, Verco said.
“Under the new anti-terror laws they can do this, but it seems to me that applying terror laws to activists is steadily eroding the base of our democracy.”
During the December 7-18 UN summit, “dozens of protests from the small to mass rallies of 40,000 people, took place; the Danish police arrested nearly 2,000 people”, a March 18 Mobilization for Climate Justice statement said. “The police are now processing nearly 200 legal complaints about the treatment of the arrestees.”
[Action is needed in support of Verco and Weiss. To send a message to the Danish justice and foreign ministries to support the two, please click here.]
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentMaluku Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Office chief Poli Kayhattu said over his cellular phone from Jakarta on Tuesday that at least two international experts on coastal resources management have confirmed to be the keynote speakers at the conference.
"Two small islands and coastal management experts, respectively from China and Maldives have confirmed to be the keynote speakers at the 7th National Conference on marine, small islands, and coastal resources management in Ambon," Kayhattu said.
He said the conference would be conducted as part of the upcoming international marine event of Sail Banda 2010, scheduled to last from July to August this year.
Kayhattu said that besides the international experts from China and Maldives, Coordinating Minister for Economy Hatta Rajasa and Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Fadel Muhammad would also act as speakers in the conference.
The coastal resources management conference is part of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry`s biennial activity, and the one this year in Ambon is themed, "To Knit the Integration of Marine, Small Islands, and Coastal Resources Management for Food Resilience and People`s Welfare."
According to Kayhattu, the objective of the national conference in Ambon was to increase communication and information exchange in relation with marine, small islands, and coastal resources management for people`s welfare and food resilience.
"The conference will be attended by around 500 people who are expected to optimally formulate a new coastal resources management strategy to improve the local people`s welfare," Kayhattu said.
He expressed optimism that the 7th National Congress which had been conducted since 1998 would run well and successfully because various preparations were currently being made for the event.(*)
Conceived and coordinated by Lee Rybeck Lynd, a researcher at Dartmouth College and a pioneer in the study of converting biomass to energy, the GSB project involves scientists from across the globe seeking a solution to one of the critical problems of our times: how to supply the planet with renewable energy that can guarantee human progress without endangering food production and with minimal environmental impact. On the basis of preliminary findings, GSB project leaders believe that biomass (including sugarcane and other plant species) can meet 25% of global energy demand over the next 50 years.
In addition to Lynd, two more founders of the GSB project will take part in the São Paulo convention: Nathanael Greene of the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council; and Tom Richard of Pennsylvania State University. The Brazilian delegation will be led by two internationally renowned scientists: José Goldemberg, currently a researcher at the Brazilian National Biomass Reference Center; and Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, scientific director of FAPESP. Goldemberg and Brito Cruz are members of the organizing committee for the scientific meetings of the GSB project.
Renewable energy that does not interfere with food supplies and causes minimal environmental damage: that is a formula important not only to governments, businesses, and environmentalists but, literally, to everyone who lives on the planet. It is no exaggeration to say that humanity's adventure here on Earth depends on it. However, to transform this well-intentioned formula into concrete policies, we need reliable answers to a number of questions. Will heavy use of biofuels increase or decrease carbon emissions? How will production of biomass for energy affect how land is used in food production? What impact will biofuels have on the consumption of water, a resource that is in shorter supply every day? To what degree will countries with little potential for producing biomass become economically dependent on biofuel-producing nations?
It is clear that the questions surrounding sustainable energy are multidimensional, and that there are no simple answers. Therefore, the scientific community needs to debate these issues openly and in depth.
To facilitate these debates, the GSB project organized the five conferences that are taking place in 2010. At the first meeting, which took place in the Netherlands in February, the bioenergy situation in Europe was debated. The situation in Africa was debated as part of the second conference in South Africa (March 17-19). The third conference, scheduled to take place in Brazil, will focus on Latin America. The fourth convention (in Malaysia, June 14-16) and the fifth convention (in the United States, September 14-16) will address Asia and North America, respectively.
The choice of São Paulo, Brazil, to host the third conference was not an accident. Brazil today is in the vanguard of energy production from biomass. Nearly half the energy used in the country comes from renewable sources, of which ethanol accounts for 16%. In the state of São Paulo, the figures are even better: renewable sources provide 56% of the energy consumed, 38% coming from ethanol. Over the last 30 years, increasing use of ethanol made from sugarcane has resulted in the share of energy coming from petroleum to fall from 66% to 33% in the state.
Drawing from the results of the five conferences, the GSB project will move on to two additional stages: 1) answering, in a definitive fashion, whether it is physically possible for us to meet a substantial fraction of global energy demand (vehicle fuel and electricity generation) through the use of bioenergy, while still feeding humanity, preserving wildlife habitat and maintaining environmental quality; 2) proposing viable and environmentally responsible strategies for moving energy use onto a balanced and renewable path.
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“I cannot help but begin my remarks on a rather depressing note,” he said. “It is that we, governments of the world, have responded too slowly and too incoherently to act on the impending problems that will have, and are beginning to have, a serious impact on all of us, our lives and indeed eventually our existence as human beings.”
His statement came at the opening of an international climate change workshop on mitigation and adaptation strategies. The workshop, held at the Vice Presidential Palace in Jakarta, was attended by 25 foreign researchers from the University of Indonesia and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities World Institute (AWI).
Boediono said the Kyoto Protocol was not sufficient nor fully supported as a response to the imminent problems facing the world, while last year’s Copenhagen conference failed to produce the expected results.
“Now the [Kyoto] agreement is about to expire and there is no similar agreement, let alone a better one, in sight to take its place,” he said. “Faced with more immediate problems of dealing with the fallout of the financial and economic crises, the world does not seem to have sufficient will to tackle the longer-term, but by no means less serious, problem of climate change.
“It is for this reason, aside from the more substantive results and recommendations that I hope this workshop will be able to produce, it will also help strengthen our resolve to earnestly deal with the climate-change problem,” he said.
Boediono said he also expected the workshop would provide enlightenment on the consequences of climate change.
“But I must confess that, not being a scientist myself, but as one living my whole life in this tropical and archipelagic part of the world, the effects on our lives here have been very real,” he said. “Our agriculture, our fisheries, our forests, our water supplies have been much affected by the changing rhythms and indeed unpredictability of the weather.”
He said the best strategy for Indonesia was to start taking action to mitigate and adapt to the new conditions.
“But individual countries’ actions do not substitute for global, coordinated efforts,” he said. “The stakes are too great for each and every one of us, and time is running out. Indonesia stands ready to play an active and constructive role in the common endeavor.”
Jim Falk, director of research on climate change at AWI, said two things had to be done in Indonesia.
“We have to be able to cope with far more extreme events, high flooding, sea-level rise, decline in marine [life] and fisheries and much more,” he said.
“And at the same time we have to have in place policies to reduce the impact [of] global warming.”
Bolivia's UN ambassador Pablo Solon-Romero during a press conference. Photograph: Paulo Filgueiras/UN Photo
In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate conference, those who defended the widely condemned outcome tended to talk about it as a "step in the right direction". This was always a tendentious argument, given that tackling climate change can not be addressed by half measures. We can't make compromises with nature.
Bolivia, however, believed that Copenhagen marked a backwards step, undoing the work built on since the climate talks in Kyoto. That is why, against strong pressure from industrialised countries, we and other developing nations refused to sign the Copenhagen accord and why we are hosting an international meeting on climate change next month. In the words of the Tuvalu negotiator, we were not prepared to "betray our people for 30 pieces of silver".
Our position was strongly criticised by several industrialised countries, who did their brazen best to blame the victims of climate change for their own unwillingness to act. However, recent communications by the European Commission have confirmed why we were right to oppose the Copenhagen accord.
In a report called International climate policy post-Copenhagen (pdf), the commission confirmed that the pledges by developed countries are equal to between 13.2% and 17.8% in emissions reductions by 2020 – far below the required 40%-plus reductions needed to keep global temperature rise to less than 2C degrees.
The situation is even worse once you take into account what are called "banking of surplus emission budgets" and "accounting rules for land use, land use change and forestry". The Copenhagen accord would actually allow for an increase in developed country emissions of 2.6% above 1990 levels. This is hardly a forward step.
This is not just about gravely inadequate commitments, it is also about process. Whereas before, under the Kyoto protocol, developed countries were legally bound to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a certain percentage, now countries can submit whatever targets they want without a binding commitment.
This dangerous approach to climate negotiations is like building a dam where everyone contributes as many bricks as they want regardless of whether it stops the river.
The Copenhagen accord opens the dam and condemns millions. Various estimates suggest that the commitments made under the accord would lead to increases of between three to four degrees celsius – a level that many scientists consider disastrous for human life and our ecosystems.
For Bolivia, the disastrous outcome of Copenhagen was further proof that climate change is not the central issue in negotiations. For rich countries, the key issues in negotiations were finance, carbon markets, competitiveness of countries and corporations, business opportunities along with discussions about the political makeup of the US Senate. There was surprisingly little focus on effective solutions for reducingcarbon emissions.
President Evo Morales of Bolivia observed that the best way to put climate change solutions at the heart of the talks was to involve the people. In contrast to much of the official talks, the hundreds of civil society organisations, communities, scientists and faith leaders present in Copenhagen clearly prioritised the search for effective, just solutions to climate change against narrow economic interests.
To advance an agenda based on effective just solutions, Bolivia is therefore hosting a Peoples' Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth on 19-22 April, and inviting everyone to participate. Unlike Copenhagen, there will be no secret discussions behind closed doors. Moreover the debate and proposals will be led by communities on the frontlines of climate change and by organisations and individuals dedicated to tackling the climate crisis. All 192 governments in the UN have also been invited to attend and encouraged to listen to the voices of civil society and together develop common proposals.
We hope that this unique format will help shift power back to the people, which is where it needs to be on this critical issue for all humanity. We don't expect agreement on everything, but at least we can start to discuss openly and sincerely in a way that didn't happen in Copenhagen.
He said the conference is scheduled to be opened by Vice President Boediono on Thursday at the vice presidential palace.
He said 25 foreign researchers from APRU-AWI and researchers from UI would discuss and formulate a research cooperation agenda in the fields linked to climate change and its mitigation strategy and adaptation.
Among environmental experts to become source persons in the two-day conference are Emil Salim, Indonesia`s former minister of environmental affairs, Rachmat Witoelar, also former environment minister, Jim Falk from Melbourne University, Lee Godden from Melbourne University, Tony Jakeman from the Australia National University and Liong Shie-Yui from the National University of Singapore.
Vishnu said UI`s designation as host of the conference demonstrated the university`s readiness to play an active role in the national as well as global efforts to reduce gas emissions which is the main trigger of rising temperature in the atmosphere.
Representatives from donor institutions have also been invited to expose their various initiatives and funding schemes available now for use in the climate change mitigation and adaptation programs.
UI rector Prof Gumilar R Somantri said as an educational institution with its quality human resources UI could become an initiator of changes in social order, cultural, economic and political areas to prevent a further rise in atmosphere temperature and adjust the people`s system of livelihood under the climate change scheme.
In the meeting researchers from Indonesia and APRU could conduct a dialogue with regard to finding the best way to prevent the bad impact of climate change through research and education programs that could later be used as a reference by the government in carrying out its clean energy development programs.
Jim Falk, the director of research of APRU-AWI, said he hoped researchers from 12 noted research universities from China, Australia, the North America, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand could cooperate with Indonesia to find the right solution to deal with the climate change.
"This is a form of cooperation which will be continued to be developed with a focus on important issues the climate change affects such as water supply and city development," he said.(*)
COPYRIGHT © 2010
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Pangkalan Bunut forest in Indonesia. AFP
“Forests are in danger,” France’s Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told a press conference on Wednesday where he called for efforts to fight deforestation to “step up a gear”. Preserving woodland, which store carbon, is seen as an essential part of the fight against climate change.
France intends to play a major role in saving the world’s forests, Borloo said, thanks to its “expertise in science and forestry”.
The summit aims to give a boost to the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme, whose declared aim is to reduce deforestation in poor countries by half by 2020.
The plan will be financed by aid from rich countries or by carbon trading, which allows countries which do not go over agreed limits on carbon emissions to swap them with those who look likely to do so.
The UN estimates that the scheme could generate 20 billion euros a year to protect forests in tropical countries. But critics claim that carbon trading, which was first proposed at the Kyoto climate change conference in 1997, may hand rich countries a licence to pollute while endangering indigenous peoples and allowing conversion of land into industrial tree plantations.
The Paris conference follows 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference and aims to prepare for two conferences in 2010, one in Bonn in April, the other in Mexico City from 29 November to 10 December.
A follow-up from the Paris meeting is planned in Oslo in May.
When there was no agreement on REDD at Copenhagen, six countries, including the US and France, announced 2.6 billon euros of finance for a mechanism known as REDD+ in 2010-2012.
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