US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lauded Indonesia for its role in global climate talks to outlining a road map for emission cuts target.

The praise was made during her meeting Thursday with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta.

Clinton eulogized Indonesia’s success in hosting the Bali climate change talks, initiating a forestry forum and a coral triangle concept as efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions to tackle global warming.

During the meeting, President Yudhoyono asked the US to take the lead in creating a global consensus at the climate change conference to be held in Copenhagen later

this year.

“The President said the new global consensus could not possibly be reached without US leadership, especially with the country being the biggest carbon emitter,” presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal told reporters after the meeting.

In what many hailed as a breakthrough, the US delegation agreed to go along with the Bali road map during the 2007 climate change conference in Bali.

The Bali road map orders members of the climate conference to set new binding emissions cut targets to replace the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol requires developed nations to cut their emissions by 5 percent by 2012.

The United States previously rejected the protocol’s binding targets.

Indonesia also initiated the establishment of the forestry eleven forum (F-11) consisting of forestry countries pushing the world to “pay” for emissions absorbed by member states’ forests.

The Bali talks also adopted the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) concept to provide financial incentives to countries that protected their forests.

In addition, Indonesia also initiated the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI), aimed at halting the degradation of coral colonies and safeguarding vulnerable marine species from the impacts of global warming.

Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste will sign the initiative at the World Ocean Conference (WOC) in Manado, North Sulawesi, in May this year.

The US has pledged a grant of US$40 million to protect coral colonies in the region.

US President Barack Obama has been invited to attend the launching ceremony of the CTI, to be held on sidelines of the WOC, which runs from May 11-15.

Besides the US, the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) also honored Indonesia for its CTI initiative and the first ever WOC, which will be attended by some 10,000 delegates from 140 countries.

UNEP executive director Achim Steiner promised to table the WOC results — to be called the Manado Ocean Declaration — at the Copenhagen climate change meeting slated for December.

The promise was made during UNEP’s 25th season of Governing Council Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, that ends this Friday.

Delegates from 134 countries, including Indonesia, are attending the UNEP meeting.

“The 2009 WOC, initiated by Indonesia, has put high awareness on ocean and climate change into UNEP activities,” Steiner said.

Indonesian Maritime affairs and Fisheries Minister Freddy Numberi, who heads the country’s delegation to the UNEP meeting, said in his keynote speech, made available to The Jakarta Post, that the impact of global warming would see many small island states succumb to rising sea levels.

He reminded participants that the fallout from climate change would be vastly worse and much more long-lasting than that from the current global financial crisis.

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