“Unless we see an advance on ambitious industrialised country targets and significant finance on the table, it is very difficult for negotiators in this process to continue their work in good faith” – that’s how Yvo de Boer summarised the current situation today. But what’s frustrating de Boer (and I’m inclined to agree) is that [...]

International Success… On the international stage, Indonesia can claim with some justification that it is leading the way in advancing the climate change agenda. In the last month alone, Indonesia has been active in: Putting the role of oceans on the climate change map as well as signing the Coral Triangle Initiative (discussed in last [...]

Indonesia has formally applied to the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, a sort-of precursor of the REDD scheme. Launched at the Bali negotiations in December 2007 its objectives are: To build capacity for REDD in developing countries; and To create and test a series of incentive schemes. Although Indonesia did not participate in the [...]

  Last week the Indonesian government announced the creation of new palm oil plantations on peat lands, causing dismay in the environmental sector. As reported in my blog last week, suggested reasons fall into two camps: firstly it gives the palm oil plantation owners something in an election year and secondly the global recession, thereby [...]

As President Yudhoyono was first greeting and then demanding leadership from visiting US secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on climate change, the old saying ‘those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ comes to mind. In particular two recent events do not bode well for the future, namely the re-emergence of the forest fire problem [...]

The connections between climate change, deforestation and the growth of palm oil plantations are pretty clear. What to do is another thing. While it is easy enough to demand that the Indonesian government stop creating palm oil plantations this is an unrealistic objective. Caught between a rapidly increasing fiscal account deficit and its stated development [...]

When asked to think about the relationship between climate change and Indonesia, the most likely answers would revolve around rainforests, deforestation, orangutans and loss of livelihoods. Missing from this picture is any appreciation of the role played by the oceans of Indonesia. This is especially surprising given that Indonesia’s: the world’s largest archipelago; 17,000 islands [...]

The good news As reported in this blog last week, new rules governing the distribution of foreign donor aid under the REDD scheme had been delayed. It was however announced earlier this week that the new rules, as well as the new climate change fund, would be ready before the Bonn climate change talks in [...]

A recent report from the Economy and Environment Program for South East Asia (EEPSEA) makes grim reading for anyone concerned about the effects of climate change in South East Asia generally and Indonesia in particular. Combining hazard maps for five climate-related risks (tropical cyclones, floods, landslides, droughts, and sea level rise) with population density and [...]

At Poznan a number of developing countries – China, Mexico and Brazil – took the opportunity to announce new climate change initiatives. Indonesia’s initiative, one of the world’s top 20 greenhouse gas emitters, was conspicuous by its absence and, given recent disagreements over budgetary control, we shouldn’t expect anything soon. The body expected to take [...]