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RI expresses concern over Bangkok talks
Indonesia expressed Sunday its concerns over lack of concrete achievements in the two-week climate change conference in Bangkok
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ndonesia expressed Sunday its concerns over lack of concrete achievements in the two-week climate change conference in Bangkok.
Jakarta said the talks had been fruitless mainly because rich countries did not want to discuss their emission reduction targets though several developing countries, including Indonesia, announced voluntary cuts of 26 percent by 2020.
Head of Indonesian delegation Agus Purnomo said that Indonesia urged developed countries to continue taking the lead in emission cuts but it seems that rich nations want to avoid these obligations.
“Progress is yet to meet expectations, particularly convergence among parties on shared vision [on mid-term emission cuts] and mitigation,” Agus told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
The Bangkok climate talks ended on Friday with only Norway among the rich nations announcing a new cut in emissions of 40 percent, up from a previous commitment of 30 percent, by 2020.
The United States, which refused to ratify the first Kyoto Protocol, has yet to offer its mid-term emission cuts target to mitigate climate change.
Emerging economies, including China and India, have also refused to agree on binding targets but wanted to see more ambitious cuts by the industrialized nations first.
Agus said that in the meeting Indonesia had officially announced the country’s voluntary emission cuts of 26 percent by 2020, which could be increased by 41 percent with international support from forestry and energy sectors.
“We are also looking into the possibility to commit a billion ton of CO2 reduction by 2050 from business as usual,” he said.
Indonesia has long asked the rich nations for binding emission cut targets of at least 40 percent by 2020 to help keep average global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius.
It is feared that the increase in the average temperature of the planet would raise sea levels and threaten the lives of millions of Indonesians living in coastal areas.
Many have also raised doubts since the long deadlock on binding emissions cuts targets after the Kyoto protocol ends in 2012 would now make it difficult to agree a new climate pact in Copenhagen by this year’s end as mandated by the Bali action plan.
The negotiations in Thailand will be followed by five days of pre-Copenhagen negotiations in Barcelona from Nov. 2 to Nov. 6 before the Copenhagen meeting from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18.
The Nature Conservancy’s director of international climate policy Duncan Marsh said that success in Copenhagen could not be reached unless political leaders came to agreement on key issues that still divided them: stronger emissions reduction targets, substantial financing for technology transfer and change in developing countries, and clearer roles for major developing countries in the next round of climate action.
