Australia to provide funds for reducing gas emissions in Indonesia

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia is one of the countries to which Australia will give priority in the channeling of its Global Initiative on Forest Climate (GIFC) funds to finance efforts to reduce global CO2 gas emissions, a forestry official said here on Friday.

Indonesian Forestry Center spokesman Achmad Fauzi said in a press statement Australia would prioritize Indonesia because the latter was one of the countries possessing the world`s largest forest areas and located near Australia.

He said Australian Prime Minister John Howard had announced a fund allocation amounting to A$200 million in the form of global funds to finance greenhouse gas emission reduction activities in a number of countries.

The activities would include efforts to prevent forest damage, forest rehabilitation, reforestation and sustainable forest management, Fauzi said.

To realize the program, the foreign ministers of Australia and Indonesia had issued a joint announcement on "Kalimantan Forest and Climate Partnership," he said.

Fauzi said in the announcement, the Australian government had pledged to provide A$30 million for, among other things, peat land rehabilitation in Kalimantan provinces.

To follow up the announcement, Australian Ambassador to Indonesia Bill Farmer and the Indonesian forestry minister as well as the head of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) signed last month a subsidiary arrangement document between the government of Indonesia and the government of Australia relating to a program of bilateral cooperation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with deforestation in Indonesia.

Fauzi said the cooperation program would be effective for five years as of October 2007, with the main activities to be carried out to support the Indonesian government in the Working Group Reducing Emissions, Capacity Building in handling forest and peat land fires, research and rehabilitation.

He said the Indonesian government and its Australian counterpart had been preparing an implementing plan for the subsidiary arrangements.

For this purpose, the senior officials of both nations would meet some time in the near future and conduct a field study in the peat land areas and national parks in Kalimantan, Fauzi said.