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Govt to set up climate trust fund to woo donors
The government has announced plans to set up a climate change trust fund to manage all financial aid from donor countries for Indonesia to mitigate the effects of global warming
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The government has announced plans to set up a climate change trust fund to manage all financial aid from donor countries for Indonesia to mitigate the effects of global warming.
On Thursday, the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) said it would work with the Finance Ministry to jointly manage the fund.
"We plan to pool all grants and loans for climate change provided by donors into the trust fund," Basah Hernowo, Bappenas director of forestry and water resource conservation, told The Jakarta Post.
Currently, most financial aid from donors goes directly to the sectors it is aimed at.
"We hope to launch the trust fund before a climate change conference in Poland in December," Basah said.
He added the trust fund would disburse the money to the relevant ministries or institutions working for the mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Several nations have pledged to provide grants and loans to Indonesia, the country with the third highest level of carbon emissions in the world.
The United States, currently in the throes of an economic downturn, had earlier promised to provide a US$2.8 million grant to help Indonesia protect its biodiversity and combat climate change.
The German government has promised another $30 million.
Australia is also offering $30 million to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions through forestry projects in Kalimantan. Indonesia has 120 million hectares of forest, second only to Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"The Australian government also promised to increase its aid if the first REDD project in Kalimantan runs well," Basah said, referring to the Reduction in Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme, a emissions-cutting mechanism adopted at the Bali climate change conference last year.
Negotiators from 190 countries will meet in Poland in December to follow up on the Bali road map, including the REDD concept.
The government says that once the UN's climate change body has agreed to the REDD mechanism, Indonesia stands to reap huge profits from the projects.
Basah said the governments of Japan and France had also pledged to provide soft loans of $400 million and $200 million respectively for climate change mitigation in Indonesia.
"The trust fund will decide where the loans go. It can also be used to plug the deficit in the state budget," he said.
Agus Purnomo, National Climate Change Council secretary-general, said the planned trust fund would mirror the Aceh-Nias trust fund (RANTF).
The RANTF, a funding facility managed by the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh-Nias, was set up to pool and manage grants and contributions from donor countries, corporations and individuals to help rebuild Aceh and Nias in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
"We are still waiting for the concept," he said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono established the council to expedite efforts to deal with the impact of climate change across the country.
