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Indonesia urged to commit to protecting, restoring nature in COP29
Environmentalists and experts urge Indonesia to show a strong commitment to forest protection and restoration, through a policy framework and achievements on the ground, during the United Nations climate conference (COP29) in Baku.
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Participants listen to speeches during the United Nations climate conference (COP29) in Baku
on Nov. 13, 2024. (AFP/Alexander Nemenov)
W
eeks ahead of the United Nations climate conference in Baku, the world received the bad news that most of the forests and land that are relied upon to reduce greenhouse gas emissions absorbed little carbon dioxide in 2023.
While such discoveries may jeopardize many nations’ measures to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis, experts urged Indonesia to use its remaining forests to reap benefits from the climate conference by demonstrating strong policies and convincing progress on the ground in protecting and restoring land across the archipelago.
The study, the unreviewed draft of which was published online on Oct. 22, revealed that the carbon dioxide growth rate in 2023 was 86 percent higher than the previous year. The figure implied that “unprecedented weakening of land and ocean [carbon] sinks” had been happening due to various factors, including Canadian forest fires, the researchers wrote in the study’s abstract.
A carbon sink refers to a landscape or materials that remove greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere through natural means, such as by forests and sea grasses.
Forests in the planet’s tropical region have also seen their ability to absorb and store carbon emissions weaken due to fires and droughts that killed trees faster than usual. But the researchers offered a glimpse of hope that the forests in the wet tropics “were found to recover quickly”, citing other studies that looked at tree cover in tropical regions several years after the severe El Niño in 2015 and 2016.
Despite such findings, Indonesia may still have hopes of benefiting from international negotiations, particularly related to climate funding, as the archipelago still has patches of intact forests across its major islands, according to Dewi Ratna Sari, nature-based solutions manager at World Resources Institute (WRI) Indonesia.
