ABSTRACT
Charles Palmer and Krystof Obidzinski Introduction In 1992 Indonesia signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which it then ratified on 1 August 1994.1 On becoming a ‘Party to the Conference’, Indonesia’s state minister for the environment issued the country’s first (and so far only) ‘national communication’ report, outlining how it intended to meet its climate change commitments (Government of Indonesia, 1999). In this, it was reported that the country was a net emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG), reaching 904 million tonnes CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e), in 1994. Indonesia signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, ratifying it in 2004.2
Between 1994 and 2006 Indonesia’s GHG emissions rose by 233 per cent resulting in the country becoming the world’s third leading emitter, behind the USA and China. A recent study commissioned by the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) shows how Indonesia’s current position is primarily a result of its high rates of deforestation (PEACE, 2007). About 85 per cent (2563 MtCO2e) of its total emissions apparently resulted from forest fires, peat burning and forest clearance. To date, Indonesia, the world’s 22nd largest economy by GDP, has had little success in controlling the forest fires and deforestation that contribute to its disproportionately high GHG emissions.
