PRESIDENT: NO SUCCESS GUARANTEED BETWEEN COPENHAGEN AND CANCUN

Oslo, May 27 (ANTARA) - There is no guarantee that the UN Framework on Climate Change Convention would be approved of toward or at the UNFCCC in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of 2011.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said this in his key address at the 2010 Climate and Forestry Conference in Oslo, Norway, on Thursday morning local time, or in Indonesia later in the afternoon.

"Like what we have seen clearly in Copenhagen, the climate change conference is having a conflict between Copenhagen and Cancun, and there is no guaranteed success," the President said.

However, he said, everybody has to stick to its commitment to follow the Bali road map drawn up in Bali in 2007 to reach a new framework after the Kyoto Protocol of 2012.

Everybody, he added, also needs to do anything in their power to boost the progress of the process.

"This is what we are doing here not wasting time and trying to make a breakthrough by way of the REDD-plus mechanism," he said.

The President said while Indonesia still has a not too small role to play in raising the living standard of its people but the country fully realized the importance of forest conservation.

Earlier, the President pointed out that in the last three years, Indonesia in intensively managing its forests, was able to reduce its forest fires, developed its peat land and eradicated illegal logging significantly.

But, the President added, Indonesia was also still facing problems and challenges because on the one hand still has to raise the welfare of the people, reduce poverty, and raise their standard of living, but on the other hand, also needs to preserve its environment.

"It is under these circumstances that we need to achieve a double purpose. Despite the problems, we will continue to try to overcome them, with or without the help of the international community," the President stressed.

The Climate Change and Forestry Conference in Oslo was aimed at facilitating voluntary partnership between the developed and developing countries with tropical forests in the implementation of the mechanism of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest damage in the developing countries (REDD+).
The Oslo meeting is expected to produce a comprehensive agreement on the readily applicable REDD+ mechanism.

The mechanism is a breakthrough between the developed and developing countries in cooperation forestry and climate change before the UNFCCC produces something more concrete, as a continuation of COP 15 carried out in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of 2009, one of the documents of which carried an article on forest management.