Empty words do more harm than good. With two years left in office, and his party’s declining popularity, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono should know better.

Typically, he did not waste the opportunity when he delivered a speech last week at the headquarters of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, West Java, before setting out to join world leaders in Rio de Janeiro for the 20+ UN Conference on Sustainable Development from June 20-22. He appealed to global leaders to move toward a green economy.

He stated confidently that Indonesia’s economy had changed from one in which forests were sacrificed in return for economic growth, to an environmentally sustainable one where forests were prized for the wide range of ecological services that they provided to society.