TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
RI advocates ocean issues at Bonn talks
Indonesian delegates attended the Bonn climate conference in Germany this week with a clear agenda of ensuring ocean issues are incorporated into climate talks to help save millions of coastal people from the brunt of global warming
Change Size
Indonesian delegates attended the Bonn climate conference in Germany this week with a clear agenda of ensuring ocean issues are incorporated into climate talks to help save millions of coastal people from the brunt of global warming.
State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar said delegates would officially table the Manado Ocean Declaration (MOD) at the Bonn climate conference, hosted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
"Our goal is to put ocean issues on the negotiation table at the Bonn climate conference," Minister Rachmat told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
"For us, the Bonn conference is "the right door" to enable ocean issues to be included on the official agenda of the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference."
The MOD requiring countries to promote sustainable ocean management and ocean conservation was an output of the World Ocean Conference (WOC) in Manado in May.
The ocean conference was initiated by Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic nation, which has about 5.8 million square kilometers of marine territory.
According to Minister Rachmat, once ocean issues are adopted as part of the UNFCCC agenda, the chances for ocean nations to get financial incentives for adaptation and technology will be wide open.
Coastal communities, mainly in small island states, are deemed as being the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, mainly due to rising sea levels.
The countries have repeatedly called on rich nations for financial and technological assistance to stem climate change.
Three-thousand delegates from 190 countries will gather in Bonn between June 1 and June 12 to prepare a new agreement on reducing carbon emissions after 2012 by setting targets for developed nations.
The new climate-change pact will succeed the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires 37 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
After the Bonn meeting three further climate-change meetings are scheduled for this year, ahead of the Copenhagen meeting, where Kyoto's replacement is to be formally adopted. Aside from the UNFCCC meeting, Indonesia is expected to promote ocean issues to UN members as part of an informal consultative process on ocean and laws of the sea (UNICPOLOS) in New York in June and at the UN General Assembly in New York in November.
Earlier, Indonesia and other forest countries promoted the forest as an alternative mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
After 10 years of intensive negotiations, the international community adopted a policy on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) at the Bali climate conference in 2007.
The REDD is being pushed as a key element for a new global agreement to fight climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, paving the way for forest nations to receive financial incentives to avoid deforestation.
"We hope carbon mechanisms such as those regulating forests can be applied to ocean issues," Minister Rachmat said.
He said that ocean countries still need to run scientific research to learn the ocean's ability to mitigate climate change.
