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Garuda, IATA sign MoU on carbon emission cuts
Novan Iman Santosa , The Jakarta Post , Singapore | Wed, 02/03/2010 11:00 AM | Business
Indonesian flag carrier Garuda Indonesia signed Tuesday an MoU on reducing carbon emissions in the aviation sector with the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
The MoU on carbon offset was signed by Garuda president director Emirsyah Satar and IATA director general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani at IATA’s Green Pavilion on the first day of the 2010 Singapore Airshow at the Changi Convention Center.
Emirsyah said the MoU would enable passengers to decide whether or not to pay to cover their own the carbon footprint for their flight when booking online on the Garuda website. Once fully implemented, the program would allow passengers to calculate the compensation required, the volume of reduced CO2 emissions needed and available emission reduction activities.
Emirsyah said the airline and IATA had been talking on the carbon offset program since mid-2009. “Garuda is the 15th airlines to participate in the initiative,” he said.
IATA’s carbon offset program is a ready-to-use software which airlines can offer to their passengers to compensate for carbon emissions by contributing to carbon reduction projects in developing countries.
Bisignani said aviation contributes about 2 percent of total carbon emissions but IATA and the aviation sector in general were taking the issue seriously.
“It is not only IATA and airlines but also aircraft producers and engine makers who are working together to reduce emissions,” he told reporters after signing the MoU. He said there was a reduction of 7 percent of carbon emission in the aviation sector through various efforts in 2009.
Meanwhile, Garuda vice president for safety, security, and environment Capt. Novianto Heru Pratomo said the airline would work with IATA to find appropriate projects for the carbon offset initiative. He said Garuda previously had reforested some 250 hectares of forest in the Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan and another 250 hectares along the Arakundo River water basin in Aceh.
When asked whether Garuda would soon use biodiesel for its aircraft, Novianto said the use of biodiesel for commercial airlines was still at a trial stage.
Novianto explained that Garuda is modernizing aircraft cabins in its new Boeing 737-800 aircraft. All seats in both Executive and Economy Classes are being equipped with individual in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems.
Boeing senior vice president East and Southeast Asia sales, commercial airplanes, Robert K. Laird, claimed to reporters that Garuda is the only airline to equip all its Boeing 737 aircraft with IFE systems for all seats.
Laird said that was the reason why Boeing asked Garuda to display one its latest aircraft to represent Boeing’s commercial product in Singapore. Garuda officials said the new 737-800 is already operational in the Garuda fleet.


Asia’s sustainable growth
Emil Salim , Jakarta | Fri, 02/19/2010 10:38 AM | Opinion
Indonesia as part of Asia suffered economic crises in 1997-1998 and 2008-2009. The first crisis was severe and practically wiped out most of Indonesia’s major economic achievements.

Indonesia’s response to the crisis by tightening monetary policy and raising interest rates created a deep drop in Indonesia’s growth rate by 13 percent during 1998. Since then, Indonesia has slowly recovered from this deep crisis

But then a second crises, originating from the US sub-prime credit system, hit the Indonesian economy in 2008. This time the road of fiscal stimulus has been followed to prevent a serious recession. Indonesia’s robust export growth, as is the case in Europe and many other economies, has been hampered by a waning US economy.

This means that economic leadership from the US is unlikely to come for years to come.

It is hence with great anxiety to discover that Japan’s GDP of US$5.1 trillion surpassed China’s GDP of $4.9 trillion in 2009. The Japanese government’s stimulus measures apparently stimulated its exports and global trade, accompanied by rising household domestic spending.

Meanwhile China’s economy grew by 8.7 percent in 2009. On the other hand, the European economy is struggling with the financial crises in Greece and a low growth performance in Germany.

Given all these projections, it can be predicted the gravity of the global economy will move to Asia with China and Japan as the major driving forces.

ASEAN in general and Indonesia in particular, can ride the wave of Asian growth and free itself from the grip of the recent global crisis. It is hence appropriate to now explore the opportunities for Asia’s sustainable growth beyond the global crisis and to search for venues of development in infrastructure, environment and finance.

The weakened economic situation, opens up opportunities to search for better development models that will be more resilient to competition with foreign economies and better equipped to meet the developmental challenges of the 21st century.

Asia needs to conduct its development process in a difficult and different environment along the following lines.

First, China with 1.4 billion and India with 1.1 billion people are the major source of Asian growth. Both
have huge labor and consumer power.

It means that Indonesia with 250 million people will face difficulties in competing with these two giants on the basis of labor-intensive industries. Indonesia has to find a special niche in its production that is competitive against these two countries.

Indonesia’s special niche lies in its unique natural, tropical, terrestrial and marine resources that China and India, as well as Japan, don’t have.

The new mindset of development must then be to shift from resource exploitation to resource enrichment. The basic strategy must be to raise the value of our unique tropical natural resources.

The bark of our tropical trees has ingredients used in medicine for cancer. The leeches in our tropical soil release hirudin that acts as a medicine against the thickening of blood that causes heart attacks and strokes.

Indonesia has the highest diversity of butterflies in the world, which opens up the opportunity of raising cocoons with different natural colors for textile development.

Indonesia’s sea is the home of deep-sea sharks, whose liver extract is the ingredient of squalene, a medicine used to slow aging. Its fast sea currents between islands are sources of wave energy and its coral reefs are rich in diversity and fertility.

Exotic fruits are widely distributed in Indonesian forests that stretch in a distance “from London to Cairo” on islands with distinct micro-climates and ecosystems. And we can go on listing the various features of our country.

In brief, Indonesia has unique tropical, biological, natural, terrestrial and marine resources that can be utilized as competitive commodities through scientific and technological development.

Second, Indonesia has diverse ethnic groups with rich cultures, arts and customs that support unique textile materials, batik, handcrafts, exotic food, etc.

It is a fertile ground for creative industries that are emerging as a new economic activity. It also gives impetus for high-quality tourism development.

Third, Asia is confronted with the need to achieve low-carbon growth. China, India and Indonesia have massive sources of coal for hundreds more years. It is the cheapest source of energy for development.

Fourth, Indonesian infrastructure development must be geared toward the dispersion of economic activities along numerous islands. To prevent agglomeration of population into mega-cities, it is necessary to plan a dispersion of urban development supported by a viable rural sector that takes into account the natural environment.

The Kitakyushyu type of Japanese cities combined with the Sato-yama type of rural and Sato-umi type of coastal developments, already widely adopted in Japan, demonstrates that it is possible to cope with population growth within the boundaries of nature’s carrying capacities.



Emil Salim is an economist and a former Indonesian minister of state for population and the environment. This is text from a key-note address delivered in the “JBIC Forum for Asia” in Jakarta, last month.


Forest policy undercuts SBY’s emission pledge
Adianto P. Simamora , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Wed, 01/13/2010 9:19 AM | National
The Forestry Ministry’s plan to allow more mining firms operate in forests could hinder the government’s efforts to meet emission reduction targets, as pledged by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The ministry said it planned to allocate 2.2 million hectares of forests for mining activities between 2010 to 2020.
“The plan to convert 2.2 million hectares of forests for mining could release about 550 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere,” Greenomics Indonesia executive director, Elfian Effendi, said.
“This policy runs counter to President Yudhoyono’s speech [in Copenhagen] on emission reduction targets.”
The government has pledged to cut emissions by 26 percent by 2020 using its own budget of Rp 83 trillion over five years. President Yudhoyono also said the country could reduce emissions by 41 percent if developed nations provided about Rp 168 trillion in financial aid to mitigate climate change in Indonesia.
Given current trends, Indonesia is forecasted to emit 2.95 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2020.
With a reduction of 26 percent as targeted, Indonesia could reduce this figure by 0.7 billion tons, mostly from forests and wetlands.
The country’s carbon emissions come mostly from the change in land use and forestry (accounting for 48 percent of total national emissions), energy (21 percent), peat fires (12 percent), waste (11 percent) and agriculture (5 percent).
The climate change working group chief at the Forestry Ministry, Wandojo Siswanto, said the ministry would tighten permits on the use of forests for mining activities.
“The ministry receives many proposals to convert forests into mining areas, but we need to issue permits selectively and consider the expected emissions,” he said.
He said the ministry would slash about 20 percent of hotspots to minimize forest fires and combat deforestation.
Wandojo said emissions would be cut through means such as combating illegal logging, avoiding deforestation, rehabilitating land and forest watersheds, restoring production forest ecosystems and improving fire management.
Between 2004 and 2009, the ministry allocated 1.2 million hectares of forests for mining activities.
The government has long been under pressure from environmental activists over mining activities in forests that has damaged the environment and kept surrounding villagers in poverty.
Indonesia is home to 120 million hectares of rainforest, making it the third-largest rainforest country after Brazil and the DR Congo.
Deforestation in Indonesia — claimed to be the world’s worst with an area the size of Switzerland lost every year — has already led to the damage of 59 million hectares of the country’s forests.
Stop converting peatlands, govt study recommends
Adianto P. Simamora , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Mon, 01/18/2010 10:07 AM | National
A study by the government has recommended a moratorium on peatland conversion if the country wants to meet its pledged emission cuts to tackle climate change.
The study commissioned by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) also proposes a land-swap scheme to relocate existing licenses in the peatlands, but not in other degraded forests.
“Land swaps coupled with a revision of spatial planning to conserve unlicensed peatlands could contribute up to 37 percent in potential emission cuts,” Basah Hernowo, the director of forestry and
water resources conservation at Bappenas, told The Jakarta Post at the weekend.
Indonesia has around 21 million hectares of peatlands, mostly in Sumatra with 7.2 million hectares, Kalimantan with 5.8 million hectare and Papua with 8 million hectares. Most of the peatland in Papua is untouched.
The study predicted that peatlands contributed about 1 billion tons of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year, or half of the country’s total emissions.
Under a business-as-usual scenario, the study predicted emissions from peatlands would contribute 1,387 million tons by 2025.
“The utilization of the peatlands probably contributes less than 1 percent of GDP, yet accounts for
almost 50 percent of emissions,” Basah said.
The second phase of the study to assess economic aspects of peatlands will be conducted this year.
A number of plantations, industrial timber concessions (HTI) and forest concession holders (HPH) run business in the peatlands.
The Agriculture Ministry issued a 2009 decree allowing plantations to convert peatlands with a thickness of less than 3 meters.
Many said the decree was contrary to the ministry’s letters to governors in 2007, asking local administrations to stop the conversion of peatlands into oil palm plantations.
“Enforcing the law on existing forest and the plantation concessions operating in the peatlands could yield about 338 million tons in CO2 reduction, or 24 percent by 2025,” he said.
Basah said the rehabilitation of peatlands and preventing fires could also cut about 430 million tons of CO2 emissions.
Indonesia has pledged to abate the country’s emissions by 26 percent by 2020, of which 14 percent will be cut from forest and peatlands.
The study said that emissions from peatlands were dominated by anthropogenic fire emissions, peat oxidation and the removal of above-ground biomass from deforestation and forest degradation.
“The current emissions from the peatlands come mostly from Sumatra and Kalimantan, whereas Papua has extensive shallow peatlands that have the potential to increase Indonesia’s emissions if they are developed in the future,” he said.
Forest campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia Yuyun Indradi, said the study should be made as a basis to cut emissions from peatlands.
“The problem is poor law enforcement against those companies that have already converted the peatlands,” he said.
Greenpeace has protested the destruction of peatlands in Riau, including in Semenanjung Kampar, which they say store around 2 gigatons of carbon, with peat layers of more than 15 meters.
The Bappenas study also recommended the need for effective institutions to overcome overlapping mandates on the management of peat and lowland areas in the country.
It also proposed the need to develop peatland carbon policies to attract financial incentives under the current Carbon Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme