Rise to the challenge

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 04/09/2007 3:07 PM  |  Opinion

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's top authority on the subject, issued its strongest warning ever last Friday in a report about the impacts of global warming, which range from increased flooding in heavily populated mega-delta regions in South, East and Southeast Asia to hunger in Africa.

While there are claims that powerful countries like the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia managed to have the report watered down in some parts, its warnings are still loud. Some say they are the strongest ever issued by the IPCC, which groups 2,500 scientists.

The IPCC, for example, predicts water shortages that could affect billions of people and a rise in ocean levels that would submerge low-land coastal areas, effecting hundreds of million of people and potentially continuing for centuries.

Such a strong warning from the IPCC follows a similar warning from British economist Nicholas Stern, who studied the impacts of global warming from an economic point of view. In his authoritative Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, Stern predicted that climate change would cost the global economy up to 20 percent per annum, now and forever.

Regardless of the warnings from Stern and the IPCC, people living in low-land areas like Jakarta and Dhaka in Bangladesh are already experiencing those impacts in their daily lives. Floods, for example, are recurrent events in mega-delta regions in Asia.

Jakarta recently experienced some of the worst flooding in its history. We know that the impact of climate change will be too costly even for the most affluent residents of Indonesia and its is obvious that it will affect the poorest segment of the population the most. They will have few alternatives and little ability to adapt to disaster.

In fact, both the IPCC and Stern reports show that poor communities can be especially vulnerable, in particular those concentrated in high-risk areas like Jakarta and Dhaka, where flooding is a yearly event.

By exposing all these negative impacts of climate change, it does not mean that we want to treat this as a holy writ, but rather use them to remind all of us of the big challenge that lies ahead and that inaction could be catastrophic. By acting now, the impact could be lessened. Using Stern's calculation, taking action now to reduce greenhouse gasses could cost as little as 1 percent of the global gross domestic product.

Thus, it is clear that global warming has become a global challenge and is a global responsibility as no single country, even a superpower like the United States, can do it all alone.

The biggest polluters of the world, especially the United States, can no longer hide behind economic arguments such as loss of jobs or the erosion of competitiveness. They are all the more reason that countries like the United States and also Australia -- two important countries that have refused to ratify the UN's Kyoto Protocol, which sets goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions -- need to join global efforts to reduce emissions.

China, the world's second largest polluter after the United States, also need to rise to the challenge by acting quickly on global warming.

Indonesia also shoulders big global responsibility because this country contributes more than 6 percent to the global's greenhouse gasses from land use change, mainly from deforestation.

Indonesia especially is playing an important role this year by hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in December. As a host, Indonesia can help create a global sense of urgency and build collaboration among parties.

As host, Indonesia should capitalize on the IPCC report and findings that were approved unanimously by governments last week, as a means to guiding the upcoming meeting on issues such as extending the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012, or building a new system to reduce greenhouse gases.

Another challenge for the December meeting will be a bit selfish in nature for Indonesia -- how to incorporate deforestation into the existing system or the new system, and find a more permanent funding scheme to curb deforestation.

More importantly, we should match the urgency of global warming with an equally urgent response. Otherwise, we will see all the predictions come true, and we all will suffer.

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