Indonesia Has Lowered 11 Percent Greenhouse Gas Emissions

JAKARTA, Aug 25 (Antara) - The Ministry of Environment and Forestry noted that until 2017 Indonesia has lowered 11 percent of its 29 percent greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target by 2030. "Indonesia's GHG emission reduction targets are already listed in the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). We currently need to focus on the role of every region in the country to achieve the targets," the ministry's Director General of Climate Change Control Nur Masripatin said during a socialization program of "Local Role to Meet NDC Targets" in Jakarta, Thursday. Based on the first NDC of Indonesia that was submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in November 2016, the country set a target to reduce GHG emissions to 29 percent unconditionally and up to 41 percent conditionally compared to business as usual in 2030. A 2017 National Working Meeting conducted by the ministry suggests that the targets of NDC need to be further delivered to the local level, consisting of non-parties stakeholders and stakeholders in the provinces, districts or cities, private sectors as well as civil society. The efforts to achieve the targets of NDC in the local level, according to Masripatin, will be focused on three main sectors namely forestry, energy and waste. In addition, adaptation issues is also considered as a focus that needs to be addressed at all levels. "We (central government) need to listen to the locals about what they have been digging up in terms of mitigation and financing. We should also need to map the funding sources in every region that come not only from domestic sources but also from foreign donors," she pointed out. In order to control the production of GHG emissions out from the human activities (anthropogenic caused), the Paris Agreement mandates the implementation of NDC which contains climate change mitigation and adaptation plans in each member country, including Indonesia. The conditional targets will be achieved through the reduction of GHG emissions from forestry (17.2 percent), energy (11 percent), agriculture (0.32 percent), industry (0.10 percent) and waste (0.38 percent). Global warming has come to the attention of the world community where 197 UNFCCC member countries are committed to preventing the rise of global temperature from exceeding 20C or equivalent to 450 PPM greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2100.