Archive for December, 2007
By Adhityani Arga
SUWUNG KAUH, Indonesia, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Dark, foul-smelling mangrove swamps can help Indonesia’s coastal communities fend off rising seas and stronger tropical storms caused by climate change, experts say.
As 190 nations meet for Dec. 3-14 U.N. climate talks on the resort island of Bali, looking for ways to broaden a pact to slow down global warming, experts say mangroves are not getting the attention they deserve as a protective coastal barrier.
“Mangroves are a natural way to lessen the severity of the impact (of climate change) to coastal communities,” said urban planning and climate change expert Enda Atmawidjaja.
“They are natural sea barriers, and they are also much cheaper then building sea walls made of concrete.”
Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands, is extremely vulnerable to a rise in sea levels, storm surges or more intense tropical storms linked to global warming.
The U.N. climate panel says seas could rise by 18 to 59 cms (7-23 inches) by 2100. More than 40 million of Indonesia’s 220 million population live less than 10 meters above sea level.
Mangroves are trees and shrubs that grow along a saline strip along the coast, now and then swamped by tides. The thin roots provide a habitat for shrimps and small fish, break up waves and hold back silt and soil from that damage coral reefs.
Mangroves can keep rising seas at bay to a certain extent, giving communities more time to adjust. The trees can help people cope with heatwaves and help break up waves in the event of a tropical storm.
DEFORESTED
But decades of rampant development along Indonesia’s 57,000 kms (35,000 miles) coastline have left nearly 70 percent of its 5 million hectares (12 million acres) of mangrove forests deforested or degraded, scientist Hiroyuki Hatori told Reuters.
“Indonesia is the world’s number one country in terms of mangroves. Some statistics say that 25 percent of the world’s mangrove exist in Indonesia,” said Hatori. “However in many areas of Indonesia mangroves are fast receding.”
Like in many parts of Indonesia, vast swathes of mangrove forest in “the neck of Bali”, a strip of land that connects a tiny peninsula in the south to the main part of the island, were turned into shrimp ponds during a boom in the 1980s.
But the ponds were soon abandoned, leaving large areas barren. Scientists later discovered that violent waves were chipping away at the coast, sparking fears that lower part of the island could be cut off in a decade’s time.
A government project sponsored by Japan’s development arm set off in the early 1990s to restore the area’s vast mangroves, filling about 1,000 hectares of land with nearly 20 types of mangrove.
It became the first big-scale restoration project in Indonesia, with a mangrove nursery supplying free saplings to 18 restoration projects across Indonesia.
Today, project head Sasmitohadi said Indonesia has made giant leaps in its effort to preserve mangrove forests, but the increasing demand for settlements in the world’s fourth most populous nation is putting pressure on the mangrove forests.
“To be honest, human beings are the biggest threat to mangroves,” Sasmitohadi said. Small-scale conversion into shrimp and fish ponds also continue to pose a threat to mangroves.
“Indonesia should step up its conservation efforts for the world’s next generation,” Hatori said. “There are only 18 million hectares of mangrove forests left in the world, once degraded, it would be difficult to recover.”
(Editing by Alister Doyle)
Source: http://www.reuters.com/
December 7th, 2007
Esther Samboh, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Malaysia did not ever lay claim to Indonesia’s traditional arts, including songs, dances, fabrics, puppet theater and musicals, Malaysian Ambassador to Indonesia Dato Zainal Abidin Zain said Wednesday.
“Read our website, we never claimed any of Indonesia’s traditional arts as our own,” Dato said.
“It has been exaggerated by irresponsible parties who have negative motives to spoil our good relations with Indonesia.”
The ambassador was speaking to a group of journalists at the Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta and he said he wanted his statement to put an end to the controversy, which has ignited outrage among Indonesians.
Media reports from Kuala Lumpur said the Malaysian government also agreed on Tuesday to drop from its latest tourism campaign two dances with Indonesian origins.
Dato said culture was an emotional matter and that it would be easy to provoke two sides by playing with cultural sensitivities.
In October, Indonesia accused Malaysia of using the republic’s traditional song Rasa Sayange (Feeling of Love) as a background song in its tourism campaign.
Numerous cultural copyright issues followed, because Indonesian traditional arts had been used by Malaysia in its tourism campaign but never claimed as Malay in origin.
Dato said Indonesia had yet to present its facts regarding the controversy.
“Recently, there have been rumors spreading through the internet among Indonesian and Malaysian youngsters to hate each other using Indonesia-Malaysia bilateral issues,” Dato said.
“This should immediately be curbed and things must be made clear (for both sides).”
The relations between Indonesia and Malaysia have been impacted recently by issues including Indonesian immigrant workers’ rights, forest fire haze and overlapping territorial claims.
Last week, activists demonstrated outside the Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta, slamming Kuala Lumpur for promoting in its tourism campaign Indonesia’s traditional masked dance Reog, which comes originally from Ponorogo, East Java.
“It was a sigh of relief after hearing the Ambassador’s clarification that Malaysia never claimed Reog as its own and it was brought by Javanese people to Malaka,” Ponorogo’s Regent Muhadi Suyono told journalists.
Suyono said he hoped in the future, Malaysia would identify `Reog’ properly so that people would realize its origin.
Mukhlis Paeni, the director general for arts, films and cultural values at the Culture and Tourism Ministry, said Indonesian and Malaysian governments will discuss the feasibility of jointly promoting both countries’ performing arts.
“The joint promotion will be attempted so that when people see Malaysian tourism campaigns with Reog masked dances, they will also know that it is originally part of Indonesia’s traditional culture,” he said.
Source: The Jakarta Post
December 7th, 2007
Nusa Dua, 5 Dec. (AKI) - A representative of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) said that climate change is a matter of human rights for her people, who risk becoming stateless and refugees due to global warming.
The current United Nations climate change summit taking place in Bali on how to mitigate global warming condemn small island states, said a Greenpeace Climate Change Advisor from Fiji, Arieta Matalomani Moceica, speaking on behalf of AOSIS.
“The scenario pictured under the Kyoto Protocol means that thousands of people from the Small Island States, and in particular those from the Pacific Ocean, will lose their land and livelihood and will became environmental refugees,” Moceica told Adnkronos International (AKI) on the sidelines of the Bali conference.
“We do not want that. We do not want to be second class citizens in a developed country. We have a land and we want to live there. The world must listen and act.”
Moceica explained that some of the AOSIS islands are among the world’s lowest-lying and, therefore, particularly vulnerable to the rising sea levels caused by global warming.
She added that even if the Kyoto Protocol targets were met, thousands of people would be forced to abandon their homes.
The Kyoto Protocol requires 36 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States - the world’s biggest polluter - has not ratified Kyoto. The pact excludes developing countries.
People in the Fiji, Niue, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands - some of the member states of AOSIS – have started to resent westerners, who they blame for global warming, said Moceica.
“People are bitter and disappointed with westerners. They feel frustrated and abandoned,” she stated.
According to UN recent reports, sea levels rose by a global average of about 3 millimetres annually from 1993 to 2003. However, a 2006 study by Australian oceanographers found parts of the western Pacific and Indian oceans rose by almost 2.5 centimetres every year.
Delegates from over 170 nations meeting in Bali through 14 December aim to frame a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.
Source: http://www.adnkronos.com/
December 6th, 2007
Indonesia has a massive untapped potential for eco-tourism, which must be carefully managed in order to turn the south-east Asian nation into a serious destination for environmentally conscious globe-trotters.
While the bars and discos of Bali are firmly on the global tourist map, Professor Yoichiro Takanashi, director of the Japanese Ecotourism Society (JES), told a conference on Tuesday that Indonesia needs to develop its eco-tourism policies.
Comprised of 17,508 islands – around 6,000 of which are inhabited – Indonesia has a genuinely unparalleled range of environments, wildlife and ecosystems.
The country already attracts many eco-tourists to Borneo and Sumatra, the only places in the world where one can see orangutans in the wild.
Nevertheless, Professor Takanashi stressed the importance of protecting local culture and natural heritage, while also ensuring that local people benefit directly from tourism.
Marketing director general of the tourism ministry, Thamrin Bachri, agreed with the professor, noting that eco-tourism policies need to be tailored to suit the interests of foreign tourists rather as much as those of local people, reports Antara News.
The International Ecotourism Business Forum took place in Wosobo on December 2.
Japan is to bring a new law on eco-tourism into effect in April next year. The country is home to 28 national parks and many other sites of special environmental importance.
This article was brought to you by holidaylettings.co.uk, the UK’s No.1 holiday home website.
Source: http://www.holidaylettings.co.uk/
December 6th, 2007
JAKARTA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) — Indonesians planning to travel to Australia for holidays over the next few months should lodge their visa applications as soon as possible due to peaking demand, the Australian Embassy said here on Tuesday.
Australia processed nearly 60,000 visitor visas for Indonesians planning a holiday or short stay in the country last year, a 12 percent increase on the previous year.
”Going by previous experience, November and December are particularly busy - our tourist applications often double at this time,” First Secretary at the Australian Embassy, Leanne Blackley, was quoted by the national Antara news agency as saying.
”We anticipate Australia will again be a popular holiday destination for Indonesians over the Christmas and New Year period. We are therefore encouraging people to plan ahead and lodge their visa applications as soon as possible,” Blackley added.
”If Indonesian visitors lodged visa applications now, we can process most in five working days or less. When our applications double in the weeks ahead, these visas may take longer,” Blackley said.
She said she knew from the airlines that people were making holiday bookings already — and in some cases they were scheduling additional flights to meet the demand.
Blackley pointed out that the Embassy was issuing more clients with a 12-month multiple entry visa, so they were able to travel as often as they like in the 12 months after the visa is issued.
”So there is every reason to apply now, rather than waiting until the final days before traveling to Australia,” she said, adding that the vast majority (96 percent) of visa applications lodged in Indonesia were approved last year.
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/
December 5th, 2007
by Benteng Reges
Papua Governor Barnabas Suebu offers international community seven million hectares of tropical forests to reduce CO2 emissions. Indonesia is currently destroying 51 km2 of forests every day or 1.8 million hectares per year.
Bali (AsiaNews) – In order to counter illegal deforestation, one of the country’s worst problems, Indonesian authorities are offering seven million hectares to the international community to soak up and reduce CO2 emissions in the world. Governor Barnabas Suebu of Indonesia’s Papua province made the announcement yesterday at the start of the international conference on climate change in Bali.
This plan is part of a framework of co-operation between Greenpeace and the local government. “We are ready to do it with the available forest of seven million hectares,” the governor said, this against an “available forest of nine million.”
Mr Suebu also announced an overall review of the licensing process that grants private timber companies logging rights. So far the process has been abused by unscrupulous companies whose harvesting practices have tended to destroy everything.
During the governor’s press conference, environmentalists slammed the central government for issuing easy licences to forest companies who harvest the resource an industrial scale, especially for palm oil.
This industry is highly profitable but leaves a huge environmental print. In the last 25 years 18 million hectares of forests have been wiped out this way.
At present Indonesia’s forested areas still cover 145 million hectares, but are disappearing quickly.
According to a government report, each day the country loses 51 km2 in forests or the equivalent of 1.8 million hectares a year.
Source: http://www.asianews.it/
December 5th, 2007
By MICHAEL CASEY
BALI, Indonesia (AP) — Government leaders started arriving Sunday for what are expected to be lengthy and contentious negotiations on how to fight global warming, which could cause devastating sea level rises, send millions further into poverty and lead to the mass extinction of animals.
Delegates from more than 180 nations will attempt to jump-start talks during the Dec. 3-14 meeting on how to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. They also will consider whether cuts in carbon emissions should be mandatory or voluntary, how to reduce deforestation, and ways to help poor countries, which are expected to be hardest hit by worsening droughts, floods and violent storms.
“There is a very clear signal from the scientific community that we need to act on this issue,” said Yvo de Boer, the general secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. “We have to turn the trend of global emissions in the next 10 to 15 years … The political answer has to come now.”
The Kyoto pact signed one decade ago required 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other the heat-trapping gasses emitted by power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transportation sources. It set relatively small target reductions averaging 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
A new agreement must be concluded within two years to give countries time to ratify it and to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted transition.
De Boer said industrialized nations, which have pumped the lion’s share of greenhouses gases into the atmosphere to date, should take the lead in reducing emissions. So far the United States, the No. 1 offender, says it will refuse any deal that calls for mandatory reductions.
“Since developing countries are just beginning to grow their economies, it’s not reasonable at this stage to ask them to reduce their emissions,” he said, referring in part to China and India, which oppose caps and any other measures that will impinge on efforts to lift their people from poverty.
“They can be asked to limit their growth.”
The European Union wants Kyoto’s replacement to limit global temperature rises at 3.6 degrees above the levels of the preindustrial era. The EU, Canada and Japan have endorsed a 50 percent emissions reduction by 2050 to meet that goal and avoid the worst effects of global warming.
The United States, which along with Australia refused to sign Kyoto, said ahead of the Bali talks that it was eager to launch negotiations and sought to deflect criticism Washington was not doing enough.
President Bush said a final Energy Department report showed U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, declined by 1.5 percent last year while his economy grew.
“Energy security and climate change are two of the important challenges of our time. The United States takes these challenges seriously,” Bush said in a statement. “This puts us well ahead of the goal I set in 2002.”
Still, the United States will find itself isolated at the conference, given that Australian Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd, whose party swept to power in general elections just one week ago, immediately put signing the Kyoto pact at the top of his international agenda.
Last month in Spain, a Nobel Prize-winning U.N. network of scientists issued a capstone report after six years of study saying that carbon and other heat-trapping “greenhouse gas” emissions must stabilize by 2015 and then decline.
Without action, they said, temperatures will rise, changing the world.
The Arctic ice cap melted this year by the greatest extent on record. Scientists say oceans are losing some ability to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, the chief industrial emission blamed for warming. And the world’s power plants, cars and jetliners are spewing out carbon at an unprecedented rate.
At best, analysts believe, Bali could lead to a two-year negotiation in which the United States under a new administration, the Europeans and other industrial nations commit to deepening blanket emissions cuts. And they say major developing countries could agree to enshrine some national policies — China’s auto emission standards, for example, or energy-efficiency targets for power plants — as international obligations.
Source: http://ap.google.com/article
December 3rd, 2007
(Adds transport minister quotes)
JAKARTA, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Flag carrier Garuda Indonesia may seek help from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to comply with European Union (EU) air safety standards, Indonesia’s Vice President said on Friday, which could open the door to European routes.
The European Commission updated on Wednesday its list of airlines banned from flying to Europe.
It lifted a ban on Pakistan International Airlines, but kept 51 Indonesian airlines, including Garuda, on the blacklist.
“Garuda has talked to KLM for consultancy to help comply with the European (airline) standard,” Kalla told reporters.
“We should not misunderstand this. Don’t get angry with them. This is a good opportunity to push ourselves to resolve this problem. It’s true that the key for airline business is safety.”
Indonesia has suffered from a string of airline accidents in recent years, raising questions about safety standards and leading to the commission’s ban in June.
A Garuda plane crashed while landing at Yogyakarta in March, killing 21 people. In January, 102 people aboard an Adam Air jet were killed when it plunged into the sea off Sulawesi.
An EU team visited Indonesia earlier this month as part of a review for deciding whether to lift the ban.
Transport Minister Jusman Syafi’i Djamal said France, Germany and the Netherlands had expressed interest in helping with expertise, but he did not elaborate.
The minister said an EU team would visit Indonesia again in three months’ time to conduct another review.
“They want proof that the improvement already achieved by Indonesian airlines and the Indonesian regulator is sustained, not temporary,” he told Reuters in an interview.
But Djamal criticised the European Union’s blanket ban on Indonesian airlines, describing it as a policy of isolation and punishment.
“To improve the safety level we need time, we need experts and we need cooperation between nations. We don’t believe that isolation and punishment is a good policy,” Djamal said.
Although no Indonesian airline now flies to EU member states, the ban means tourist agencies are obliged to warn customers Indonesian airlines are unsafe, if they sell package tours that use such domestic carriers.
Garuda is also keen to resume flights to the Netherlands so that it can benefit from a rise in tourism. The Dutch were Indonesia’s colonial rulers for more than 300 years and for many years chaired the country’s foreign aid donors group.
KLM is the Dutch arm of Air France KLM.
As part of its safety improvements, Indonesia has signed an agreement with the International Civil Aviation Organisation, established an independent regulator, and streamlined air traffic control.
The country has also been working to improve the skills and pay for airline industry workers, as well as to set up an independent and capable accident investigating agency.
Air travel in Indonesia has blossomed since the sector was deregulated in 1999, as several new airlines sprung up. (Reporting by Muhamad Al Azhari and Ahmad Pathoni; Editing by Sara Webb and Jerry Norton)
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/
December 3rd, 2007
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