Indonesia to Invite Finance Ministers to UN Environment Talks
Date: 30-Jan-07
Country: NORWAY
Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati agreed in talks with Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN Climate Secretariat, to invite finance ministers representing rich and poor nations to the annual talks, to be held in Bali in December.
"The idea is to get about 5-10 finance ministers from around the world to attend," said John Hay, spokesman for the Secretariat. De Boer is on a tour of the Far East.
About 100 environment ministers are expected to attend the talks, which are likely to launch formal negotiations about extending the UN's Kyoto Protocol, the main UN plan for curbing global warming, after a first period running to 2012.
"We have to widen beyond environment ministers," Hay said.
Environment ministers often lack enough power in cabinets to lead policy shifts that would, for instance, mean cuts in the use of fossil fuels such as oil and gas that are blamed by scientists for stoking global warming.
Hay said invitees would also include World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and Nicholas Stern, head of the British government's economics service and author of a 2006 report arguing that it would be far cheaper to act to slow climate change than to ignore the threat.
Environment ministers agreed scant new measures at their last talks in Kenya in November even though many governments say that climate change is one of the most pressing long-term problems facing the planet.
Kyoto obliges 35 rich nations to cut emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 as a step towards averting what could be disastrous changes such as floods, droughts and rising seas.
But Kyoto has been weakened by a US pullout in 2001 and participating nations only make up about a third of global emissions. Many rich nations want developing states such as China and India to do more to brake their rising emissions.
Hay said that Indonesia was interested in finding ways to help slow deforestation -- a big source of greenhouse gases because trees release carbon dioxide as they rot.
