Tackling climate change in Indonesia

Geographical location:

Asia/Pacific > Pacific Ocean > Fiji

Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Indonesia > Bali
Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Indonesia > Java > Ujung Kulon National Park
Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Indonesia > Sulawesi > Bunaken National Park
Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Philippines > Tubbataha Reef Marine Park

Summary

In Indonesia, where the majority of the country’s 210 million inhabitants depend on natural resources, climate change has direct environmental, economic and social consequences. Tackling the impacts of climate change, including forest fires and coral bleaching, is becoming a national priority.

WWF’s work in Indonesia focuses on promoting clean energy and energy efficiency, and developing strategies to reduce climate change impact, particularly conservation of the country’s tropical forests and coral reefs.

Background

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released its Third Assessment Report on Climate Change, documenting more strongly than ever before the daunting prospects for wildlife in a warming world. The report finds that climate change has already had an impact on ecosystems and will spell extinction for many species and vast changes for most ecosystems. With increased temperature ranges of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees C predicted over the next century, it is clear that climate change is an enormous and frightening threat to biodiversity, affecting WWF's mission worldwide.

In Indonesia, global warming has been threatening natural resources at a great scale. Forest fires and massive coral bleaching events were examples from the El Nino event of 1997-1998. El Nino impacts are predicted to be more severe and more frequent as a result of global climate change. The two events were responsible for massive destruction of forest and coral area in Indonesia, led to a decrease in ecosystem area and quality, and thus, threatened biodiversity and its biological/ecological services. These are serious problems for Indonesia, country where most of the human population depend on natural resources.

Objectives

- Identification of opportunities for carbon intensity reductions in key sectors, by WWF offices in 7 developing countries, with at least 5 focusing on emissions limitations in the power/energy supply sector.

- Establishment of renewable energy and energy efficiency platform.

- Better policies on power sector restructuring.

- Entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol.

- Actively be involved in second commitment period discussion.

- People have taken action in response to appeals by the WWF Climate Change Campaign.

- People are exposed and taking action on the climate change issues in relation to the vulnerable facts of forest, ocean, and species.

Solution

National action

The intention to contribute to the global effort to reduce CO2 intensity in Indonesia stems from concerns mainly in the following areas:
- High emissions growth rates during the period of rapid economic development, from carbon intensity sectors (electricity and industries) and exploitation of natural resources. Promoting emission reduction programme is made more difficult by the fact that Indonesia is burdened with a huge international debt.
- Indonesia is facing a restructuring programme for power sectors. Increasing private sector opportunities associated with energy market liberalisation and trade and investment patterns are leading to synergies with WWF's industry goals. This creates opportunities to intervene in drafting legislation and policy preparation right at the beginning of the change.
- Evidence of impacts, including forest fires that emitted significant amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere.
- Development of WWF Asia Pacific climate change team.

Focus on the power sector

Indonesia has planned a power sector restructuring in 2006. Yet the plan has been weak and has many loopholes. It has not considered the current situation and condition of the power sector itself; for example the lack of understanding and knowledge of stakeholders on the issues, the usual non-transparent process, as well as the analysis of its impact on future livelihood in context of environmental and health.

Intervention shall be made to strengthen the restructuring plan (politically and technically) and to guarantee the delivery of an environmental friendly power plan policy. Opportunities to build stronger co-operation nationally as well as regionally are essential for this work. Existing network as Working Group on Power Sector Restructuring (WG on PSR) has to be maintained and supported though capacity building and collaborative action.

Focus on non-governmental sectors of society

There are many environmental NGO's - international as well as national ones - in Indonesia. Many of them have touched some part of climate change or clean and efficient energy issues as their targets. However, the network is still weak in terms of collaboration and strategy. Building stronger and more strategic network shall be one of the main priorities.

Working with one side of climate change will not answer the problems. Like many other global issues, climate change must be seen in its two sides of face: the roots of the problem and the solution to overcome the problems. As a rapid developing country, Indonesia has been facing a great deal of pollutions (air, land and water) as results of immature industrialisation process with weak law enforcement.

Therefore, strong collaboration with private (industry) sectors that have shown their efforts and interests as the "pioneer" in clean and efficient energy use is needed to seek opportunities to reduce CO2 intensity effectively as well as influence the government policies. Society such as the Indonesian Renewable Energy Society (METI or Masyarakat Energi Terbarukan Indonesia) will play a big role on pursuing this strategy, thus they will be important partners to work with.

Energy players are the key partner of this climate and energy programme. Although not all energy sectors are WWF's expertise (e.g. transportation), WWF Indonesia will collaborate with strong groups and support the existing network. However, with limited resources that it has, WWF Indonesia will not become the main players for all sectors.

Focus on capacity building of national negotiators

WWF Indonesia will provide capacity building and awareness to Government of Indonesia (GoI) to enrich their knowledge and strengthen their negotiation position in UNFCCC forums. Particularly in the coming second commitment period where developing countries like Indonesia will play bigger and more significant role in climate change mitigation action. Workshops, skill shares and discussions will be planned to accommodate this target.

WWF Indonesia will focus on monitoring and accelerate the process of Kyoto Protocol ratification and its implementation by the GoI. WWF Indonesia will also support our government in monitoring other countries implementation of the protocol, in particular the setting up and implementation of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Focus on forest, in particular the carbon sequestration issue

Forest fires in the last two El Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events in Indonesia (1982-1983 and 1997-1998) released significant amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, surpassing all other carbon emissions from Indonesia for the same period. The CO2 released from the forest fire event in 1997-1998 increased global atmospheric CO2 concentrations by one part per million. The amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere from the felling and burning of forests throughout the tropics is estimated to reach about a quarter from the total annual CO2 emissions.

The above mentioned fact has lead Indonesia to an awkward position in many negotiation forums. It also leads Indonesia as the main targets of many developed countries which are trying to get more carbon credits through cheaper projects which in the end will result in endanger the conservation works of WWF.

Therefore WWF Indonesia will support the advocacy of having good criteria of social and environmental aspects of any carbon project in the forest as a result or decision under UNFCCC, as well as exploring the possibility of contributing to CO2 emission reduction by developing an impact management strategy through better forest management.

Achievement

A. Significant achievements as a newly-developed programme of WWF Indonesia are:

1) During the first two-year implementation of the Climate and Energy programme, WWF Indonesia (previously unknown in this field) gained recognition as one of the leading entities working on the issue. So far, WWF Indonesia (represented by the project) plays the advisory role for Indonesia’s Delegation for UNFCCC. Other requests are under way for WWF Indonesia to function as the main facilitator for the Government's Key Climate Negotiators' Capacity Building programme, and member in the Advisory Group of Global Environmental Issue for the Ministry of Environment. Project persons are frequently being requested as resource person on climate issues in the printed and electronic media events.

2) WWF Indonesia and other NGO partners won the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the government.

B. Programme implementation:

1) Climate Witness project is running in Fiji, and a report on coral bleaching in Kabara was completed by the site team.

2) Coral Bleaching Monitoring Protocol completed and was launched in the International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) in Okinawa in June 2004.

3) Rapid Response Mechanism was finalized and agreed with the WWF global climate senior scientist and Powerswitch! campaign manager.

4) Protocol to Marine Programme finalized and distributed in Buenos Aires, and commitment to use the protocol obtained from project sites.

5) Brochures and image bank were produced and posted in both WWF Indonesia and WWF International intranets.

6) Pilot for Coral Reef Focal Project in Asia Pacific is underway, and coral bleaching monitoring is executed in four sites (Bali Barat, Bunaken, and Ujung Kulon in Indonesia and Tubatha in the Philippines). Reports on the first (year) round of monitoring are completed.

7) Public Education (early) achievements: the programme gained public support in the forms of:
- 1000+ people signed the petition at the 1st Public Education Events.
- 500+ people signed to become members of an e-mail discussion list on climate change and energy issues as the results of the Day after Tomorrow Film Preview.
- 15+ radio stations, magazines, and newspapers interested and joined as media partners for climate change and energy issues.