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  PlanetArk 30 Jan 07
Indonesia Wants Countries Paid to Keep Forests
Story by Ahmad Pathoni

JAKARTA - Indonesia wants rich countries to pay developing nations to preserve their forests, which are vital to help remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, the country's environment minister told Reuters on Tuesday.

The proposal will be tabled at a UN conference on climate change to be held in the Indonesian resort island of Bali in December, Rachmat Witoelar said.

"Preserving our forest means we can't exploit it for our economic benefits. We can't build roads or mines," Witoelar said. "But we make an important contribution to the world by providing oxygen. Therefore countries like Indonesia and Brazil should be compensated by developed countries for preserving their resources," he said.

Deforestation has substantially impeded the ability of forests to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The biomass in forests absorbs and stores carbon dioxide, keeping a portion of gases blamed for global warming out of the atmosphere.

Some 10 percent of the world's remaining tropical forest is found in Indonesia, which has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres (91 million hectares), according to Rainforestweb.org, a portal on rainforests (www.rainforestweb.org).

It said Indonesia has already lost an estimated 72 percent of its original frontier forest, and half of what remains is currently threatened. About 21 percent of Indonesia's forests are protected, but the conservation groups say not enough is being done and illegal logging and deliberately set fires are wiping out the habitat.

Witoelar said the Bali meeting, to be attended by environment and finance ministers from around the world, would also discuss a review of the Kyoto Protocol, the main UN plan for curbing global warming.

"Any change must benefit developing countries. This will be a discussion with developing countries and rich countries having divergent interests," he said.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, 35 industrial nations have agreed to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. US President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the protocol in 2001, saying it would damage the US economy and wrongly exempted developing nations from the first phase.

A draft UN report due to be released in Paris on Feb. 2 projects a big rise in temperatures this century and warns of more heat waves, floods, droughts and rising seas linked to greenhouse gases.

Witoelar said on Monday studies by UN experts showed that sea levels were expected to rise 89 centimetres (almost 3 feet) in 2030 due to climate change, which meant Indonesia could lose about 2,000 islands.
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Related articles on Global Issues: Climate Change
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