SBY urges developed countries to cut emissions by 40 percent

Erwida Maulia, The Jakarta Post, Copenhagen | Thu, 12/17/2009 7:35 PM

Indonesia is urging developed countries to cut their emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and spend more on programs conducted in cooperation with developing countries to save the planet.

In his speech during the high-level segment of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Thursday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono asked developed countries to fulfill their “historic responsibility” to curb global warming by leading the efforts to do so.

“Indonesia believes this commitment should be around 40 percent, as required by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and all the major industrialized countries, one way or another, have to be on board.

“This is a burden and responsibility that cannot be shifted and deferred,” said Yudhoyono, who was given the eighth turn to speak at the event attended by about 110 heads of states as the conference is nearing its end.

He delivered the speech after Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, among others world leaders.

Yudhoyono also urged developed countries to provide more resources to finance activities to curb the global warming, saying the figure should ideally stand at US$25-35 billion per year until 2012.

“The developed countries do have the resources. It’s only a question of political will,” he said.

Yudhoyono also emphasized the need of developing countries to take part in global actions to mitigate the climate change, saying they must commit to a low carbon development path and not to repeat the “historical mistakes” of the industrial countries.

Likewise, he persuaded the developing countries to be open to a framework for measurement, reporting and verification (MRV), which he said was essential to ensure transparency and subsequently the effectiveness of climate change mitigation efforts.

“In this connection, Indonesia proposes that there is an international effort to establish a credible count to determine the carbon emissions of each country,” Yudhoyono said.

“Unless we get the numbers right, we will argue in circles, and it will be difficult for us to have effective plan to deal with global carbon emission.”

MRV is also needed to ensure that the support funds from developed countries to developing countries are well delivered to meet the climate objectives, Yudhoyono added.

The President also highlighted the need to adopt the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme as part of the global solution, saying “forestry nations must have something to gain in committing to avoided deforestation”.

“Our forests are the key to the global climate solution. We must now inject a new economic logic where it is more beneficial for nations and communities to keep the trees up than to chop them down,” he said.

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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during the World Climate Conference in Copenhagen on Thursday. (Kay Nietfel/European Pressphoto Agency)

The New York Times, By TOM ZELLER Jr. and JOHN M. BRODER, Published: December 17, 2009

COPENHAGEN — With time running out on the stalled Copenhagen climate negotiations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave new hope that an agreement might still be reached when she announced on Thursday that the United States would participate in a $100-billion-a-year fund to help poor nations combat climate change through the end of the next decade. Read whole article ....