Indonesia rejects debts as part of Climate Agreement

The Indonesian delegation at the Bangkok Climate Talks echoed the civil society sentiment for discouraging loan based funding for projects related reducing the carbon emission. Mismanagement on so called debt had given birth to widespread curruption and an economics crisis in the second largest tropical country - Indonesia in 1997. The delegation said that investment mechanism is favourable to fit with their sustainable development plan, which would reduce their emissions by up to 41 percent if assisted by developed country support by 2020.

Since climate activists challenge market based climate funding due to past experiences of the Clean Development Mechanism projects, hence the government should ensure that new mechanism would guarantee to protect and promote the local community, as they are the most vulnerable to climate change. They will also gain large benefits from the program; especially REDD (forestry related projects) implementation. REDD is an aid programs intended to curb the deforestation and forest degradation through carbon offsetting. The developed country also knows as Annex 1 should pay to developing country that has capacity to reserve their forest, as much as their carbon reduction target.

Last year, Indonesia agreed to sign on to a two year agreement on REDD with the Norwegian government. This is challenging to implement on the ground considering there is a conflict with the local stakeholders like government and the industries who are directed affected by the establishment of the project. I believe that as long as appropriate policies, capacity building initiatives and institutional and legal framework has been established, its all right if their is a slight delay in the actual implementation of REDD initiatives. The delegates also said that they would launch a National Action Plan in the end of April.

Indonesia hopes that they would get significant reduction on their emission through forestry and peat land control. They will also allocate more money through their Sustainable Development Program, especially for the Renewable Energy Program. In an attempt to balance climate initiatives with that of core government focus areas like employment and poverty alleviation efforts it would be cautious with its usage of polluting sources of energy since the country is quite dependent to palm oil, forestry based product, and mining.

As climate talks resume, we hope that the outcome would be fair and reflect ambitious commitments for a better and safer climate to live in.