Jakarta, 17/04 (Suara Karya Online): Indone­sia is deemed to pro­vide huge its dona­tion by absorb­ing car­bon emis­sion from the indus­trial coun­tries. Up to now, Indone­sian for­est has been absorb­ing car­bon emis­sion resulted from the indus­trial coun­tries’ smokes. Accord­ing to Forestry Min­is­ter, MS Kaban, the reg­u­la­tion on car­bon absorp­tion incen­tive is not yet available.

Indus­trial coun­tries release CO2, and the gas is then being absorbed by forests in Indone­sia and other devel­op­ing coun­tries. But there are no incen­tives yet, so actu­ally we give them great dona­tion,” Said Kaban in Jakarta, yes­ter­day, speak­ing as keynote speaker in one day sem­i­nar of “Rais­ing Ini­tia­tives of Vol­un­tary Car­bon Trad­ing” con­ducted by Indone­sian Eco­la­bel­ing Insti­tute and Forestry Department’s Kop­erasi Peruma­han Wan­abakti Nusan­tara (KPWN). Accord­ing to him, indus­trial coun­tries that release CO2 emis­sions put their con­cern over defor­esta­tion issues only. While on the other hand, the efforts con­ducted by the devel­op­ing coun­tries in pro­tect­ing their forest’s sus­tain­abil­ity are not appro­pri­ately appre­ci­ated. “Our envi­ron­men­tal activists are sup­posed to voice out the imbal­ance com­pen­sa­tion over car­bon emis­sion,” he said.

There­fore, all stake­hold­ers inter­ested in envi­ron­men­tal issues, includ­ing forestry depart­ment and envi­ron­men­tal activists, must urge the indus­trial coun­tries to pay atten­tion on the car­bon absorp­tion incen­tives. ”It must be bal­anced. The indus­trial coun­tries release emis­sion, our for­est absorbs the car­bon, there must be incen­tives as a com­pen­sa­tion,” he said. The study of UN FAO in 2006 reveals the fact that for­est areas and the under­ly­ing soil all over the world have saved more than 1 tril­lion ton of car­bon. This means twice as many in the atmos­phere. Mean­while, for­est dam­ages add around 6 bil­lion ton of CO2 to the atmos­phere annu­ally. Kaban explains that if cal­cu­lated from the econ­omy per­spec­tive, car­bon trade clearly gives ben­e­fit. ”Unfor­tu­nately up to know we have not recieved the ben­e­fit (from car­bon trad­ing scheme). There are many car­bon trad­ing con­cepts being devel­oped, but all are still lack of social­iza­tion,” he said. (Devita)