NEW YORK — The top US climate negotiator warned Tuesday against expectations of any binding deals on cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the next UN conference on the issue in Mexico later this year.

Climate change special envoy Todd Stern also insisted the United States still had a major role to play in the battle against global warming, despite its failure to get a bill cutting greenhouse gas emissions through Congress.

Stern said after a high-level international meeting on climate change here that nations would seek progress on non-binding "decisions" at the talks in Cancun, Mexico, which some experts believe will produce another stalemate.

"No one is anticipating or expecting in any way a legal treaty to be done in Cancun this year," he said.

"The focus at this point is on a set of decisions on the core issues," Stern said after talks among 17 nations responsible for 80 percent of carbon emissions.

The two-day Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in late November was set up by US President Barack Obama to follow up last year's climate summit in Copenhagen, which ended in disappointment and without a binding deal.

"I think there are many participants that want to get a binding agreement within a reasonable time. I just don't see that in the cards for the Cancun meeting," Stern said.

"Expectations are not too high, but they are not low," Stern said, summing up the mood among climate negotiators ahead of the meeting at the Mexican resort.

Stern added the New York talks had revealed "broad agreement on the importance of making progress in Cancun" on climate mitigation, transparency, deforestation and financing for developing countries.

After the acrimony and bitterness of the Copenhagen summit last December, Stern said the Cancun meeting would revert to the level of ministers and senior foreign ministry officials, with no world leaders expected.

Despite the White House's failure to pass a climate change bill, and the dim prospects for such action, Stern said Obama was sticking by his pledge to cut emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

He said the administration would rely on other tools to meet the target, including the use of Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

Stern also dismissed the notion that the Obama administration's failure to enact climate legislation devalued its role in the search for a new deal to replace the Kyoto Treaty -- which Washington did not ratify.

"The voice of the United States is always important. It is important for the United States to put in place its own full scale plan for low carbon energy and reducing greenhouse gases," he said.

"The more we can do that, we will have an even stronger voice in these discussions."

The House of Representatives did pass a climate bill that would have set up a cap-and-trade system to regulate carbon emissions.

But the Senate effort to pass a watered-down bill collapsed and with polls pointing to Republican gains in mid-term elections in November, many experts believe hopes for a climate bill are dead, at least in the short term.

That inaction drew complaints from European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard in a speech in the United States on Monday.

"Until action is taken in the US, others have an excuse -- valid or not -- for not coming along," Hedegaard said at the Harvard Kennedy School on Monday.

"Legislation is an important signal of political commitment.

"Many countries are asking themselves why they should take action as long as the biggest emitter in the developed world is unwilling to live up to its global responsibilities."

Hedegaard also said the European Union would be prepared to sign a binding climate accord in Cancun, though regretted that some other nations would not.

Environment ministers from 45 countries are also scheduled to meet in Geneva in September at the invitation of the Swiss and Mexican governments.

And negotiators from the 194 signatories to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change are to meet in Tianjin, China for a final preparatory round of talks in October.

The New York talks included representatives from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States.

The November 29-December 10 meeting in Cancun aims to revive negotiations with an eye to sealing an elusive climate treaty in a year's time. (By Stephen Collinson)

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

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WASHINGTON — Representatives from the 17 nations responsible for 80 percent of the emissions thought responsible for global warming will meet in New York next week, a US envoy said Tuesday.

US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern said the meeting would take place September 20-21, as part of ongoing global talks on reducing harmful emissions that cause climate change.

The talks fall under the aegis of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, launched by US President Barack Obama to facilitate climate talks ahead of last year's disappointing United Nations conference in Copenhagen.

The successor conference to the Copenhagen meet is set for this November in Cancun, Mexico.

Stern said the New York meeting would provide a chance for "a candid dialogue among major developed and developing economies to make progress in meeting the climate change and clean energy challenge."

The meeting will also "advance the exploration of concrete initiatives and joint ventures that increase the supply of clean energy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

Environment ministers from 45 countries are also scheduled to meet in Geneva in September at the invitation of the Swiss and Mexican governments.

And negotiators from the 194 signatories to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change are to meet in Tianjin, China for a final preparatory round of talks in October.

The New York talks later this month will include representatives from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

Source: AFP/Google

Indonesia called on parties to the UN biodiversity convention to stop receiving illegally traded endangered species, or loss of biodiversity would continue.

A senior official from the Forestry Ministry warned that Indonesia’s measures to protect endangered species, such as tigers and orangutans, by restoring their ailing habitats could be futile if foreign countries took no serious action to deal with illegal trade.

“It is similar to illegal logging. We could not rub it out if countries like Malaysia and China still accept illegal wood from Indonesia,” Darori, the ministry’s director general for forest protection and nature conservation, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

The two countries could be entry points for transfer of illegal timber from Indonesia to other nations, he added.

Darori made the statement as negotiators from 193 countries to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are preparing for a two-week summit in Nagoya, Japan, to seek solutions on how to protect biodiversity.

The tenth conference of parties (COP) to the CBD would be held on Oct. 18 to Oct. 29, with the closing three days slated for ministerial meetings.

International demand for rare species is still high, Darori said.

“We recently seized three tiger skins being exported at prices between Rp 50 million [US$5,550] and Rp 100 million per pelt,” he said.

Indonesia once had Javanese and Balinese tigers, but they are now extinct. The ministry predicted there were only 500 Sumatran tigers left in the wild.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature named the Sumatran tiger as critically endangered, while the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora placed it in Appendix I, prohibiting its trade.

“We want the upcoming CBD summit to discuss illegal trade of endangered species to protect biodiversity,” Darori said.

The three big outcomes of the COP10 meeting in Nagoya would be global agreement on a new strategy, the mobilization of finance, and a new legally-binding protocol on access and benefit sharing, a statement by the secretariat of CBD said on Wednesday.

“The decisions we take now will affect biodiversity for the coming millennium. We can’t have one outcome without the others. The COP10 meeting is all or nothing,” the Convention on Biological Diversity executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf said.

The CBD statement specifically elaborated on biodiversity issues in Indonesia. Indonesia was labelled as one of seventeen “megadiverse” nations, and has more biodiversity than any country other than Brazil, and is home to 10 percent of the world’s flowering plant species and 12 percent of all mammals. Many of Indonesia’s species — and more than half of the archipelago’s endemic plant species — are found nowhere else on Earth.

This biodiversity provides many natural goods and services to people of Indonesia, but it faces direct threats from human activities.

Since 1997, the rate of deforestation has reached 2.4 million hectares per year, mostly due to logging, conversion for agriculture and forest fires, the statement said.

This has contributed to the increase of the items on Indonesia’s list of threatened species, which now includes 140 species of bird and 63 species of mammal. (By Adianto P. Simamora)

Source: The Jakarta Post

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Jakarta (September 6, 2010) – Today the Indonesian National Climate Change Council (DNPI) released several studies which show how Indonesia can continue to grow the economy and achieve its greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions targets. The Government of Indonesia has committed to cutting GHG emissions by 26% from business-as-usual-levels by 2020.

“We needed a comprehensive assessment of Indonesia’s GHG emissions. The Government of Indonesia has set clear targets for both sustainable economic development and reduction of GHG emissions last year, and we now have a big-picture view of how to integrate strong economic growth with reducing emissions,” said Rachmat Witoelar, Executive Chair of the DNPI.

The DNPI study has been developed over the last 18 months and involved more than 150 government, private-sector and NGO participants in sectoral workshops and meetings. It shows the range of emission reduction actions that are possible for Indonesia with technologies that either are available today or are highly likely to be available in the future. The study, which has analyzed current GHG emissions and reduction potential in eight sectors, estimates Indonesia’s annual GHG emissions in 2005 at 2.1 Giga tons (Gt). As Indonesia continues its economic development, total GHG emissions are projected to rise to 3.2 Gt by 2030 without changes in the way emissions from the eight sectors are managed. The eight sectors covered by the study are peat, forestry, agriculture, power, transportation, petroleum and gas, cement and buildings.

Peatland and forestry are by far the largest contributors to Indonesia’s GHG emissions. Emissions from carbon-rich peatlands amount to 41% of Indonesia’s total emissions (in 2005) while forestry accounts for 37% of total emissions. The main initiatives for reducing emissions in these sectors are through slowing deforestation and decomposition of peatland, improved forest management, reducing land-clearing through burning and using already degraded land for agriculture.

“We now know where we can make the biggest greenhouse emissions cuts and what the costs are, so we are no longer talking in abstracts. One of the most important achievements of this study is to clarify and quantify the importance of land-use, and land-use change in Indonesia’s current emission picture. This is an area we didn’t have a clear overview of before,” said Agus Purnomo, Head of the Secretariat of DNPI.

Indonesia currently account for approximately 5.0% of global GHG emissions. The DNPI study shows that Indonesia has the potential to reduce its GHG emissions by 2.3 Gt by 2030, representing a reduction of 46% from 2005 levels. Such a reduction would equal 7% of the total global reduction needed to prevent global warming of more than two degrees centigrade, according to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). There are many opportunities to cut emissions further, but such deep cuts will require significant investments and therefore require international support according to the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibility. While a few countries have made substantial commitments, the international community is still divided in its support for these principles.

Green Growth Strategies

In parallel with the development of the GHG mitigation study, the DNPI is also collaborating with selected Indonesian provincial and district governments to develop green growth strategies. Three provinces, Jambi, Central Kalimantan and East Kalimantan, were keen to work with the DNPI to identify green growth opportunities to boost their economic development while cutting carbon emissions.

“In a developing economy like Indonesia the people will not choose to reduce GHG emissions if to do so mean slowing economic growth. Our strategy does not require that choice. We have found that economic development and GHG mitigation can be mutually reinforcing. A more sustainable economic path requires a paradigm shift, but in the long-term it will increase Indonesia’s economic growth,” said Rachmat Witoelar, Executive Chair of the DNPI.

Indonesia’s GHG emission profile is unique because it is heavily dominated by emissions from forest and peatland where more efficient use of the land both increases economic value and reduces GHG emissions. Stopping the use of fire as a tool for land clearing, improving logging practices so less timber is left to rot and goes to waste, reforestation of areas degraded by unsustainable logging practices, rehabilitation of previously opened peatlands are some examples of high-impact GHG mitigation initiatives in the green growth strategies. They share the principle that their long-term economic value greatly outweighs the benefits from continuing current unsustainable and high GHG emitting activities. For example, East Kalimantan can increase its GDP growth from a business-as-usual rate of 3% per annum to 5% per annum without increasing emissions by moving to higher value-added activities and promoting less carbon-intensive sectors.

“At the 1.4 million hectares Ex-mega Rice Area we are already making significant headway in reducing emissions by raising the water table and preventing fires. These initiatives will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions significantly over the next few years,” said Central Kalimantan Governor, Teras Narang.

Indonesia is the only large developing country that has committed itself to making large absolute cuts in its GHG emissions. Realizing the vital role Indonesia can play in combating global climate change, the international community has offered its support. An important first step was taken in May 2010 with the establishment of a REDD+ Partnership between Indonesia and Norway, in which Norway pledged US$1 billion towards REDD+ readiness programs in Indonesia in return for verified emissions reductions. The Partnership will provide additional capital for a range of investments, which could include microfinance programs for local community sustainable development projects, low-cost loans to help plantation crop smallholders increase their yields, and incentives for palm oil growers to use degraded lands for new plantations.

“Reducing GHG emissions is a complex undertaking and financing needs to flow where it can yield the greatest benefits. The green growth strategies are based on this principle and recommends viable initiatives that are ready for implementation. It represents a new development pathway that reconciles economic growth with significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Agus Purnomo, Head of the Secretariat of DNPI.

These steps position Indonesia well to benefit from the US$30 billion of fast-start funds committed at United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention Conference of Parties (COP-15) in Copenhagen in December 2009 and accelerate Indonesia’s growing investments in green development.

About DNPI

In July 2008, the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issued Decree #46/2008, establishing the Dewan Nasional Perubahan Iklim (DNPI) or National Council on Climate Change (NCCC). For further information please contact: Agus Purnomo at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it / 0811999462 or Amanda Katili at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it / 0811972143.

Source: Press Release DNPI

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