Global warming and sustainable development

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 09/18/2007 2:51 PM | Opinion

Rokhmin Dahuri, Jakarta

In 1972 the Club of Rome published a book titled Limits to Growth which described a project report on the destiny of humankind. Its conclusions were stunning: The world would ultimately run out of many key resources.

Human use of natural resources would exceed the earth's capacity to generate those resources by the mid-21st century, resulting in a decrease in economic development and a decline in social well-being of humanity. These limits would become the ultimate predicament of humans.

Now, after 35 years, it is obvious that such an alarming prediction is closer to reality than many realize, or are willing to admit.

Throughout history, human beings have lived on the earth's sustainable yield, the interest from its natural endowment. However, as the world population has doubled and as the global economy has expanded sevenfold over the last half-century, human claims on the earth have become excessive.

We are asking more of the earth than it can give on a sustainable basis, creating not only a myriad of environmental problems such as deforestation, floods, desertification, overfishing, biodiversity loss, pollution, acid rain and global warming; but also a bubble economy, one whose output is artificially inflated by overexploiting the earth's natural endowments.

If negative impacts of other environmental damages are limited at a local or regional scale, global warming and its concomitant effects would practically be hitting every corner of the world. Global warming is unequivocal as is now evident from observations of increases in average global air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and polar ice cups, and rising global mean sea level.

There will be serious flood risks and increasing pressure for coastal protection in low-lying coastal zones such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, the north coast of Java and Kalimantan; small islands in the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Indonesian archipelago; and large coastal cities like New York, London, Cairo and Jakarta. Melting glaciers will initially increase flood risks, then strongly reduce water supplies, eventually threatening one-sixth of the world population, particularly in the Indian sub-continent, parts of China and the Andes in South America.

Indonesia plays a pivotal, unique, but to some extent dilemmatic role in combating global warming for three major reasons.

First, as a developing nation with high unemployment and poverty, we are obliged to boost sustainable economic growth to provide employment and prosperity for all Indonesians. Since the economy of the country depends heavily on the primary sector, including agriculture, forestry, fisheries and mining, increasing economic growth means extracting more natural resources and opening up more forests, peat lands and other natural ecosystems.

Meanwhile, deforestation, peatland degradation and forest fires are the third largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions after the energy and industry sectors, and have made Indonesia the third largest emitter of GHGs.

Second, Indonesia is very likely to experience significant damages and losses with global climate change. Being the largest archipelago on earth with many low-laying coastal areas, Indonesia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming. Sea level rise is predicted to cause about 2,000 small islands to disappear; inundate low-lying coastal zones, particularly the eastern coast of Sumatra, Jakarta Bay, most of the north coast of Java, and the majority of Kalimantan's coastal areas.

The warmer world will also result in increased frequency of extreme weather events, prolonged droughts and heavy rainfall leading to big floods. Indonesia's productive coastal and marine ecosystems, agricultural areas and rich biodiversity are also at risk. This, in turn, may have devastating effects on the agriculture, fisheries, forestry and tourism sectors, thereby threatening food security, national income and the livelihoods of the majority of people.

Third, being located on the equator connecting the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Indonesia is the largest source and sink of heat in the Asian region and the center of Asian monsoon circulation, which plays a key role in the dynamics of global climate.

As the host of the 13th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will be held in Bali, Dec. 4-13, Indonesia should take full advantage of such an invaluable world event to get international support in implementing sustainable development to make Indonesia a democratic, just and prosperous nation by 2030.

Indonesia should also take the lead in advocating the global community, developing and developed nations, to halt global warming. Basically, global warming occurs when we release GHGs into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb it, creating a greenhouse effect. Therefore, global warming can technically be resolved by reducing emissions of GHGs to a level that can safely be absorbed by the atmosphere, and at the same time enhancing the earth's capacity to absorb GHGs.

Although there has been an increasingly stronger global awareness that global warming is the most serious threat ever not only to sustainable development but also to the survival of humankind itself. Yet, government leaders are not in agreement in finding solutions to curb global warming.

Some industrialized countries, in particular the U.S. and Australia, argue that the Kyoto Protocol is seriously flawed as it does not commit developing countries to the same targets on cutting emissions as developed countries. In the meantime, developing nations, especially China and India, insist reducing GHG emissions should be weighted by the level of a country's economic development, which is crucial for developing countries to lift hundreds of millions people out of poverty.

To settle such a contentious disagreement on a fair basis, we have to use the polluter-pays principle and take into account the level of each country's economic development. This means that the more one country release GHGs, the more it has to cut emissions.

However, if a country's level of economic development is still low (developing nations with high unemployment and poverty), then efforts to curtail GHG emissions must be assisted by the global community, particularly developed nations, through transfer of technology, financial assistance and free and fair (a win-win) international trade.

In practice, cutting GHG emissions can be done by simultaneously raising energy efficiency and shifting from non-renewable to renewable energy. Each country certainly will have to design its own plan for increasing energy efficiency. Nonetheless, there are a number of common elements. Some are quite simple but highly effective, such as improving energy efficiency standards for household appliances, implementing more stringent residential and commercial air-conditioner standards, using tax credits and energy codes to improve the energy efficiency of all buildings.

Finally, enhancing the earth's capacity in absorbing GHGs can be achieved through protecting existing natural ecosystems (such as forests, peatlands, lakes, coral reefs and seagrass beds), and simultaneously restoring degraded natural ecosystems according to conservation principles.

The writer is professor of coastal and marine resource management at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture and a former minister of maritime affairs and fisheries.

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