President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono delivering a speech during a plenary session at the Bella center in Copenhagen. (AFP Photo/Attila Kisbenedek)
Indonesia's president told delegates at the UN climate conference on Thursday that talk of international cooperation was meaningless without concrete financing and reduced emissions targets.
Presenting Indonesia as a leader among developing countries, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reiterated the country’s voluntary commitment to reduce its emissions by 26 percent by 2020, or by 41 percent with more international assistance.
“As a non-Annex 1 country, we did not have to do this. But we read the stark scientific warnings,” Yudhoyono said. The president did not give more specific details on how Indonesia would achieve these cuts, as some observers had hoped.
A “fast launch fund” at the conference was a good start, the president said, referring to the 10 billion pound Copenhagen launch fund.
“But I believe the proposed figure for the fund is too modest considering at stake is the survival of humanity and our planet,” he said, adding that an ideal figure would be between $25 billion and $35 billion per year until 2012.
Speaking shortly afterwards, the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said the United States would help set up at $100 billion a year fund to help poor countries finance climate policy.
Urging delegates to “seal the deal” at the conference, Yudhoyono called on all major industrialized countries to reduce their emissions by 40 percent.
“110 world leaders did NOT come here to fail,” he said.
Fitrian Ardiansyah, WWF-Indonesia’s program director for climate and energy, who has been a key observer to the REDD negotiations at COP15. welcomed Yudhoyono’s comments, saying the president needed to urge other world leaders to follow suit and set firm targets.
“Besides lobbying EU and other developed countries' leaders, SBY is needed to lobby other leaders of new emerging economies since they are crucial in this climate solution,” he said.
“Indonesia has shown that we can play a role, in facilitating the process in Bali, and I hope this is a good experience and can be used again to facilitate a new agreement that can happen at the end of the week,” Fitrian 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 ....
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