Our media houses rarely fund such trips, especially to report on the environment which our editors give low priority to.

For us journalists, this can make work in our newsrooms frustrating, but when we do get to travel we realize that the environment beat is not neglected worldwide.

When I travelled to the UN climate change conference in Durban last month — with a fellowship from the Climate Change Media Partnership — I was amazed.

Whichever way I turned my head in the media centre, I could meet new journalist friends from every continent on Earth.

At the cafeteria nearby I could chat with experienced environment reporters from around the world – people whose articles form part of my daily diet in my newsroom back home.

I am not exaggerating when I say that reporting on the UN climate change talks is one of the best experiences an environment journalist could ever have. Suddenly it seems as if everyone in the world talks only about forests, water and climate.

My fellowship was funded by the Growing Forest Partnerships initiative, whose journalism programme I work for in Nepal.

The two week meeting was an amazing opportunity for me to develop the knowledge and skills I apply to that role by learning and networking with people from around the world.

Forests are everywhere at the climate change conference. From the entrance gate to the large exhibition hall and in negotiating rooms themselves, people are talking about trees.

Outside of the conference centre too, I learnt about the forests and how hard it is to generate new ones.

At the Buffelsdraai landfill site, operated by Durban municipality at the outskirts of the city, I visited an innovative project has helped women from local communities become “tree-preneurs“.

They sell seedlings of indigenous species to the municipality which then plants them across hundreds of hectares of former sugar cane fields.

The trip to Durban counted a lot for me as it provided an opportunity to learn and make new friends, to report back to local audiences in Nepal about the global talks and gain international exposure for my stories.

For any environment journalist in a dilemma about whether to continue their profession, this kind of meeting can inspire optimism. Amid the swirling politics, we can see the world coming together to discuss how forests, water and climate are all important for our future.

These are the stories we must keep telling.

Busisiwe Ndlela

Busisiwe Ndlela was radiant when I met her yesterday. Just this month, and with money she earned selling tiny trees, she has bought a new cupboard and an electric stove and she is proud as can be.

I met this 60-year old mother of seven on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa where she and hundreds of other women are helping to transform their communities and the landscape around them, one seed at a time.

Welcome to the Buffelsdraai landfill site, operated by the eThekwini (Durban) municipality. Under law there must be a buffer zone between it and local residents, and until recently this was occupied by fields of sugar cane.

“Sugar cane did nothing for us,” says Busisiwe when I ask her about life before the tree-planting project began. “It was for them [white farmers], not us.”

This all changed in 2008, when the municipality began to work with local people to turn this 800-hectare area into a mosaic of native grasses and rich forest, to help offset the carbon emissions associated with South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup.

As the new trees mature over the next 20 years, they will absorb 48,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide — about the same amount produced by 25,000 passengers flying from Northern Europe to South Africa and back again.

As well as helping to limit climate change, the project aims to protect wild nature, improve water quality downstream and create new livelihoods for poor local communities.

It is a simple idea, and it revolves around jobless local people like Busisiwe becoming ‘tree-preneurs’.

First, they collect seeds of native tree species and then they plant them at home in old bottles, plastic bags and other containers. Once the trees reach a certain height the tree-preneurs can sell them to the municipality, which then grows them up a bit more in a nursery before planting them in the buffer zone.

So far more than 600 people have got involved — 80 percent of them women — and they have sold a quarter of a million baby trees, including acacias and several species of wild fig trees.

A 30-centimetre tall tree is worth five rand but if a tree-preneur tends it a little longer and it reaches a metre in height, she can sell it for ten rand (US$1.25). In reality, this is a cashless project. Instead the tree-preneurs receive vouchers that they can exchange for things like food, building materials and school fees for their children’s education.

Since 2008, Busisiwe has sold about 1,200 trees and — depending on their height — this will have earned her vouchers worth between US$750 and US$1500. In a part of the world with 80 percent unemployment, few opportunities and a minimum wage of under a dollar an hour, this income is not to be sniffed at.

The star seed planter though is Ningi Gcabashe. She has sold 15,000 trees to the project and now works as a facilitator, teaching other members of the community about native tree species and how to grow them from seed.

“When the project came to Buffelsdraai, I never realised it would help the community,” said Ningi yesterday, before explaining that she has been able to build a new home using bricks she brought with vouchers from the trees.

“My life improved,” she said. “Before the project I never touched a car. Now I have paid for driving lessons.”

Today she manages the Trees for Life programme of the Wildlands Conservation Trust, the organisation that runs the reforestation at Buffelsdraai. This is just one of several full-time jobs the project has created.

There is temporary work too, especially at this rainy time of year when around 60 communities members are paid to plant trees.

And in a couple of years when the job is complete and 500 hectares of forest have been replanted, new opportunities will spring up.

“After the canopy is planted there will be enrichment plantings, i.e. planting in the understory to increase the biodiversity in the forest,” says Sean O’Donoghue of the eThekwini municipality’s environmental planning and climate protection department.

“Thereafter we’re hoping to create jobs with regards maintaining the forest,” he says. “There will also be waste-preneur opportunities — collection of recyclable waste and selling back to us. And we hope to stimulate eco-tourism in the buffer zone, for example mountain bike tracks.”

The idea is that these activities can form the basis of sustainable businesses and long-term employment for the surrounding communities.

In time, the forest can bring many new benefits but women like Busisiwe and Ningi are already gaining from the greening. “People did not believe,” says Ningi. “Now they do.”

This story originally appeared at Mike Shanahan’s blog — Under the Banyan

A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that unless action is taken the loss of wild species will accelerate because of a range of threats.

These include drought and wildfires, the spread of invasive species, pests and pathogens, changes to the way species interact with each other, and increased conflict between humans and wildlife. 

With climate change adding to existing threats – such as deforestation, pollution, hunting, and urban expansion – the future looks bleaks for 200 animal species in Tanzania that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies as “endangered” or “critically endangered”.

These include the black rhino, green turtle, rondo bush baby, Usambara blue-bellied frog, Tanzania shrew, woolly bat, wild dog, Sokoke scops-owl and hammerhead shark.

But efforts to protect the habitats of wild species – from both climate change and other threats – can bring benefits to people too. 

The FAO report Wildlife in a Changing Climate  urges governments to act to maintain current ecosystems, particularly those that are still healthy and intact and are most likely to best withstand climate change.

Other measures it recommends include setting up networks of protected areas, integrating conservation with forest management, and restoring ecosystems that are important for climate change resilience but are already badly degraded. These include mangroves, inland wetlands, forests, savannahs and grasslands.

It says these kinds of actions could help people adapt to the impacts of climate change by protecting the natural resources that can make them resilient.

Edmund Barrow, head of the IUCN’s Ecosystem-based Adaptation Programme, offers an example from the past with relevance for the present: the case of Shinyanga.

In 1985, then-President Julius Nyerere declared Tanzania’s Shinyanga area to be a desert. People had lost many of the important environmental goods and services that their livelihoods depended on – including dry season grazing, timber and fuel wood, traditional medicines and fruits and other products they could sell such as honey and resin.

Barrow says that thanks to good development practices, farmers managed to restore over 300,000 hectares of forest and woodland by 2004.

“Although in 1985, climate change had not yet come onto the agenda, it is clear that resilience and risk management were important to the people of Shinyanga,” says Barrow. “Now over 25 years later – these foundations of resilience and risk management are important foundations on which to build and develop climate change strategies.”

“The Shinyanga people are now far more resilient to shocks and climate variability. Now the task will be to assess how resilient these systems are in the face of real climate change,” he added.

Although Tanzania has many conservation areas such as national parks, game reserves, marine parks and nature reserves, many of them are under threat from human activities and extreme weather events.

George Jambiya, governance adviser for WWF’s Coastal East Africa Network Initiative, notes that laws have been established to protect the conservation areas but the government does not have enough money, staff and equipment to enforce the laws.

“The lack of these things has led to poaching and other illegal activities,” he said.

The countries bring widely varying numbers of people to the task.

For about 95 countries (those in colours other than red), this map shows the number of pre-registered participants and the climate risk index for 2010 as determined by GermanWatch.

Click on each country to see the numbers. On the climate risk index, a lower number signifies a higher level of climate risk.

For a full list of countries’ delegates, climate risk index rank and Gross National Income per resident in dollars, click here (Excel file).

Analysis:
By Hoy Chicago (Note: The tally of delegates was compiled by hand and has a 1 percent margin of error).

Sources: 
GermanWatch 2010
UNFCCC list of COP17 delegates (part 1 here, part 2 here).
World Bank Little Data Book on Climate Change 2011

The talks are a complex web of simultaneous sessions and Malawi simply does not have enough skilled negotiators to be in every room. Nor can it offer much in exchange for action from more powerful nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases or provide money to help Malawi deal with the impacts of climate change.

Countries like Malawi do have one trick up their sleeves – the ability to form alliances — but even so the main power lies in the hands of large individual nations.

“It is a rather a tricky situation for us to negotiate as a country,” says Evans Njewa, head of Malawi’s negotiating team. “But through blocks to which we are affiliated we are able to get our views heard. Through these groupings we make our contributions and through our spokespersons our position is presented to the United Nations.”

Coalitions mean compromise

Malawi is a member of more of these negotiating blocks than most other countries. It is in the Least Developed Countries group, the Africa group, and the G77 alliance of 131 developing nations. It also works in partnership with the 43-nation Alliance of Small Island States.

Each of these groups wants rich nations to make legally binding commitments to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. But Canada, Russia, Japan and the United States say they will only do that if big emerging economies like China, Brazil, India and South Africa also make their pledges binding.

What does that mean for countries like Malawi, where climate change threatens the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals as well as the delivery of the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy?

“There is power in togetherness and we feel talking as a group carries more weight,” says Njewa, who added that Malawi’s main position was to lobby for more donor support to help it adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Just as countries can form negotiating blocks, the blocks can also form alliances. Pa Ousman Jarju, chair of the Least Developed Countries group, says that collaborating with other blocks is not a sign of desperation but shows the passion his group has for finding solutions to address climate change.

But country positions do not automatically become those of the larger group, whose agendas must be common to all of their members. This makes it hard for a country like Malawi to call for all that it wants.

Punching above its weight

Malawi could be more influential if it took the climate change talks more seriously, according to Dingani Jere, Malawi’s national coordinator for the Christian advocacy organization, the Act Alliance.

He says Malawi undermines its position by not having the President or top government officials attend.

“This is a serious meeting and looking at how crucial the issue is, we needed the President to be here,” says Jere. “After all we are just close by to South Africa. With such an attitude I don’t think we can be that influential.”

Felix Jumbe, the president of the Farmers Union of Malawi and vice president of the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions says the absence of Malawi’s president and other leaders is telling. “I think they knew that even if they made it to here they would not have changed anything,” he says. “I think such meetings are a waste of time and money.”

With little more than 24 hours to go before the end of the 2011 climate change conference, the principal secretary at Malawi’s ministry of foreign affairs, Anthony Livuza, told this reporter that the negotiations were difficult because of rich countries’ unwillingness to act. He says the impasse is very disappointing for Malawi.

“We came with a lot of hope and now our hope seems to be tampered with,” he says. “We were hoping for more commitments because Malawi faces a lot of constraints in terms of funds and capacity to deal with complex issues of climate change.” 

For Indonesia, the key to reaching economic prosperity is by using its forest resources. At the same time, Jakarta has stated the government’s commitment to reduce 26% of its greenhouse gas emission by 2020. Keeping forests alive is the best way to achieve that.

For over 40 years, Indonesia has been relying its national income from natural resources. According to Daju Pradnja Resosudarmo, a researcher on forestry governance from the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR),  around 70% of Indonesia’s non-tax revenue comes from natural resources.

The efforts to keep forests alive are facing stiff competition from the flurry of activities surrounding mining and oil palm industry. Daju mentions the increasing trend of expansion in mining activities and oil palm plantations. Oil palm plantations needed land converted from forests. Coal deposits are also mostly stored in forest lands in Borneo.

Both of these industries are backed with a steady flow of foreign investors, low interest rates from banking institutions, and relatively cheap tax on land. Put all these factors together, it’s a no-brainer. Keeping forests dead is still the more profitable option than keeping forests alive.

The way Daju puts it, “Other development sectors are heavily subsidised. If governments make land more expensive, then it lessens the competition on forest land. Therefore the government should start subsidising more environmental projects.”

Indonesia has expressed interest in an economic scheme called REDD or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The scheme obliges forest-owning developing countries to keep their forests intact. In return, developed countries would pay financial incentives to ecosystem services from the forests of developing countries. Unfortunately for the last five years countries have yet to agree the financial mechanism of the REDD scheme.

In order to benefit from this scheme, Indonesia would need to proof that they really can protect their forests from degradation or excessive logging. Unfortunately, deforestation rates in Indonesia continues to be high. Daju mentions five main factors contributing to the high rate of deforestation, one of them is administration.

In 2010, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has stated a moratorium on granting new licenses to manage primary natural forests and peat lands for the next two years. Although this does not apply to existing licenses.

Forests cover 70% of Indonesia’s land area. All of those forests areas are state-owned. However, a decentralisation programme is returning forest management back to local and regional government. This situation creates many overlapping licenses of forest land management. The five-year political cycle also creates a problem. After the election of regional leaders, there appears to be a trend of issuing new forest licenses to party donors.

Indonesia is now facing a dilemma. On one hand, there is an international commitment and (promises of) economic incentives when forests are protected. On the other hand, forests and its services are still one the country’s main income. The country also has to fulfill its projected growth of 7 percent by 2014.

After decades of relying on its natural resources to build its economic power, Indonesia is now faced with the challenge of thinking about other sources of income.

Chief of the Presidential Work Unit for Development Monitoring and Control Kuntoro Mangkusubroto acknowledges this. As of September 2010, he has also been chairman of REDD+ task force. One of his task is to find the best way to balance reaching economic growth while still protecting forests.

When asked what is the proposed economic model that Indonesia would use to switch from natural resources, his response was that at the moment, his team is still trying to find a model that will address balancing economic growth with finding solutions to the problem.

The two years moratorium, according to him, gives him the time to take pause and review laws and regulations of natural resources that have been there for four decades.

He sees the main problem in forests protection is regulation. “We know there are loopholes, overlaps, and gaps in current legislation. It fails to recognise indigenous rights and it is open for corruption on forestry governance.”

For the first time he announced that Indonesia has a single official map of forests. Before, each ministry, regional government or central government, had their own map of forests. The result is there can be two or three different licenses to manage a single forest.

“To start managing forest, we need to come up with a new set of laws that would address the cross-cutting nature of the issue. There are already two task force assigned by the president. Their job is to produce a new legislation draft to be submitted to house of legislation.”

The World Bank’s Managing Director, and also Indonesia’s ex-finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, sees forestry as the big test for Indonesia to proove its commitment internationally. “If we can show proof of it (protection) that can be verified internationally, that we are committed to REDD, I see it as a very good for Indoensia’s credibility, especially when (Indonesia is) trying to get more and more funding outside of forestry and REDD itself.” The key to implementing it, she said, is tackling the regional and provincial level, where the most of the main players are.

As all these images crystallize to become what many hope will be a positive outcome in Durban, imagine too the image of a man with an axe, preparing to chop down a tree. The fate of that nameless man in a community, and the trees — many trees — he may chop down, depend directly on the results of the deliberations in Durban. Menacing as he might seem, standing there with his axe, this man tells a story about the many people in African rural areas who survive by getting their daily needs from the forests. Firewood for cooking, herbs for curing common ailments, and the tasty bush meat that would grace steaming pots of soups, all come from the forests.

So as an estimated 1200 participants gathered on December 4 for Forest Day 5, a major side event at this UN climate meeting , I tried to see how the interests of that man who many of us know was being protected. The opening plenary of the 5th-annual Forest Day, organized by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), painted a gloomy picture.

Helen Gichohi, President of the Africa Wildlife Foundation, said that a massive wave of deforestation was sweeping across Africa, threatening its ecosystems, and eviscerating the continent’s resilience to climate change. She suggested that the UN  mechanism known as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), may provide an answer to both deforestation and climate change.  She however said that for it to be effective more needed to be done to pump money into REDD+, so as to halt the obliteration of forests in Africa, while simultaneously reducing the causes of climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. According to a working draft document of the UN-REDD Programme, the loss of natural forests through deforestation and degradation  contributes about 17 percent of total global emissions of greenhouse gases.

It was however not clearly explained how the money that flows in through the REDD+ programmes in various countries would reach the man with the axe, so that he doesn’t have to wield it. At one of the breakout sessions which focused on biodiversity safeguards in REDD+, the UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Caroline Spelman, also urged that agreement be reached here in Durban on REDD+ financing. However, Spelman admitted that getting the money to reach the very people at the end of the line was a herculean task. But she agreed that for ‘the man with the axe’ , some creative ways had to be adopted to get the money from REDD+ to reach him.

A lack of adequate money to fund adaption projects, particularly at the community level, has also seen the country lag behind in implementing these projects, risking huge economic and social loss the impacts of climate change are increasingly felt.

In an interview with this reporter on the sidelines of this year’s UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, Dr Elizabeth Gray, Global Climate Change Fellow at The Nature Conservancy, explained that a domestic climate change policy was important in coordinating the efforts of various stakeholders toward a common goal.

“A climate change policy is important because it sets out the strategy to adapt and directs resources to adaptation activities that respond to priority needs of communities,” she said, as climate negotiations involving 195 countries prepared to enter their second week.

“Without such a policy there will be no mechanism to determine who is doing what and whether they are doing the right thing and whether resources spent have brought the expected results. A policy is also important in data collection and management because implementing adaptation activities should be based on adequate data on various aspects which can only be correctly gathered when there is an authoritative mechanism to guide the collection.”

However, Dr Gray hastened to say that even where there is a climate change policy, successful implementation of adaption activities will only be realized when there are enough funds for the purpose. “There is a huge cost involved in implementing activities. Of course a country could use its local resources but some projects need huge amounts of money and this calls for additional sources of funding.

“In fact this is one of the cases in which a policy is needed so as to determine how adaption projects would be funded,” she noted, adding that a policy could also give guidance on how to mobilize local resources to provide for an adaptation fund.

A coordinated national policy and secure funding might have made a difference in a village in Tanga District. In 2000  a community in Chongoleani Village started a project to plant mangroves after an increase in the volume of sea waves  flooded and destroyed their coconut farms.  The village got small financial support from an NGO for a project called  the Tanga Mangrove Development Programme. The village government initiated the project and was responsible for its supervision. In 2005, the mangrove programme  ended and the village government was left to run the afforestation project. Two years later the project collapsed, mainly due to lack of guidance.

“The village government did not know what to do and even district and regional authorities could not provide the required guidance,” explained Hassan Dengo, Tanga District Natural Resources Officer. He says that the villagers have now abandoned the project and they are unprotected from rising sea water levels. “They have also become poorer because alongside the mangrove project, they also started beekeeping, crab  and fish farming, which earned them some income. These projects were abandoned with the collapse of the mangrove reforestation project.”

Asked on the accuracy of data used to determine adaptation projects, Dr Gray explained that climate change is about trends in the various aspects of weather and data must be collected in order to establish this trend.  “Yes, we are talking about sufficiently accurate data. And in order to get it there must be many weather stations around the country so a lot of data can be processed to give accurate results,” she said, adding that Tanzania needs more stations so as to get accurate data that would be the basis for  formulation and implementation of climate change adaptation projects.

A recent briefing paper published by Tanzania Natural Resources Forum (TNRF) highlights the fact that Tanzania doesn’t have a stand-alone climate change policy as a result of which there are weaknesses in implementation of adaptation projects.

“As  it stands, there seems to be  a large gap between on-going activities related to climate change and lack of clear policies, strategies or institutional frameworks in  place to tackle climate change. There is a practical need to have a dedicated climate change policy in the country,” reads part of the brief.

Nepali participants meeting at ICC, Forest users group boycotted the meeting after raising their voice on denial

Community forest groups demand access to climate negotiations, but lose out as fight between ministries heats up

Members of a federation of community forests from Nepal accused the government of Nepal of being biased towards them by refusing to accept their representative as a party delegate at UN climate talks.

Members of domestic and international NGOs were accepted as delegates, in addition to government officials. They are here in South Africa with delegates from 195 countries at the 17th annual UN climate summit.

“When we asked the government to give status of party to some of our members they denied. But we found out here (in Durban) that they have brought the people from NGOs and INGOs as the party delegates. It’s not fair, “said Dil Raj Khanal, who represents the Federation of Community Forest Users Nepal (FECOFUN) and is also the legal expert on natural resources.

“Everybody talks about communities by mouth but at the inner heart there is no respect for the communities,” added Khanal.

However, Batu Krishna Uprety who is the head of Climate Change Management Division at the Ministry of Environment who leads the UN climate negotiations said that they didn’t received any request from FECOFUN. “We haven’t received your request,” he replied to the query of community forest users’ representatives.

The community forest members said that the Ministry of Environment had advised them to make their request to the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation (MoFSC) as the forest ministry is the line ministry for the community forests group. But when the forest ministry sent the letter onward, it was rejected by the environment ministry.

“Everyone  is selling our name but when it comes to do some favor for us then everybody starts sweating,” said Ganesh Karki, General Secretary of FECOFUN. “We have especially realized this with the Ministry of Environment, so we boycott this meeting.”

The rift between the Ministry of Forests and Ministry of Environment is widening due to climate change in the country. The Ministry of Environment is the focal ministry to deal with climate change, something with which the Ministry of Forests has not been happy from the beginning. The forest ministry is one of the biggest and most powerful ministries in the country, far more powerful than the relatively new Ministry of Environment.

To complicate matters, the major forest initiative on climate change under the UN — known as Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) — is looked over by the forest ministry. On the other hand, the focal point for the whole UN climate treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is under the  oversight of  the environment ministry.

The forest ministry seems like it’s not happy with the limited role given to the UNFCCC processes.

These ministerial disputes have affected even the personal relationships of the officials from both ministries. In many forums they keep on criticizing each others’ work. It has become clear that they are actinag as rivals when it comes to the issue of climate change.

The rift between the ministries increased dramatically due to a cabinet meeting at Mount Everest base camp in 2009,  as ministers even stopped talking to each other. The main reason behind the fallout was the leadership of the erstwhile forest minister Deepak Bohara in organizing the cabinet meeting at the base camp of Mount Everest prior to the UN  climate change meeting in Copenhagen. The forest ministry’s lead at that time had irked environment ministry officials.

FECOFUN is a federation of more than 15,000 community forest user groups in Nepal and is one of the key players in the forestry sector. The fight between the two ministries could be one reason for the denial to include FECOFUN representatives in the government delegation.

“We don’t get any information on what’s going on inside the negotiation from the government. If our representative was included in the government then we would have been updated about the process and that could have been very useful to disseminate information about the real negotiations to our members across the country,” said Bhim Prakash Khadka, Vice-Chairman of FECOFUN, who is also here in Durban.

When Indonesia pledged two years ago to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 26% by 2020, the focus was on forests. And while efforts to reduce deforestation will play a big role in reaching the target, cities are also major sources of emissions.

To date though, there has been little action in the urban centres that are home to half of Indonesia’s population and are themselves highly vulnerable to climate change.

That is set to change as the Ministry of Public Works has called on cities to reduce emissions and adopt green development plans with three main elements: planning and design, increasing the number of green open spaces, and empowering communities.

According to Budi Situmorang, the ministry’s deputy director of national spatial development planning, 60 cities will enact such plans in 2012 and 2013.

Experts warn however that continued reliance on private vehicles could create many ‘new Jakartas’ — cities with poor public transport systems and high levels of pollution.

Avoiding the Jakarta model

The number of cities in Indonesia is increasing — from 45 in 1970 to 98 by 2010 — and many aim to emulate the prosperity of the capital Jakarta.

But Jakarta itself is an inefficient city, from the way it consumes energy and water, to its unresolved waste management challenges.

Its transport system was developed independently of urban planning, and so people there rely heavily on private vehicles. Two-hour traffic jams are a daily occurrence.

Indonesia’s green city initiatives were developed so other cities would avoid the ‘Jakarta model’. As well as planting trees and creating new green spaces, the cities will improve waste management, increase efficiency in water and energy use, and integrate transportation systems into city planning.

But green transportation will not be planned until 2020, and only implemented five year later. Until then, the gap between urban planning and transport will remain.

Why the gap?

Asked why planning and transportation were not being integrated sooner, Budi Situmorang said: “We will not use the conventional transport that we see at the moment. Green transportation is not only a matter of energy efficiency, but of developing fossil fuels with lower emissions.”

His Ministry expects that within 13 years, the private sector will develop the low-emission fossil fuels or a green transportation system that can be adopted by Indonesian cities.

John Christensen, head of the UNEP Risoe Centre on Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development says that local governments should show political will to create low carbon cities by investing more in public transportation.

He warns that cities that fail to integrate urban planning and transportation systems will end up with public transport systems that cannot meet people’s needs for comfort and speed. In this situation, people eventually revert to using private vehicles and this, says Christensen, turns cities into major sources of greenhouse gases.

Stefan Schurig, climate and energy director for the World Future Council, agrees. He says that one of the most important ways to reduce emissions in cities is to think of new, creative ways to change consumption patterns of transportation.

Speaking last week at the UN climate change conference in Durban, he said that promoting public transportation is one way of doing it.

But, most importantly, he says, it is the local government’s political decision that has the ultimate power to determine how a city’s population will efficiently move from one place to another.