By NNN-Antara
Jembaran, Bali (Indonesia) : Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono opened an international finance ministers` meeting on climate change at the Bali Intercontinental Hotel here on Tuesday morning.
“It is a great pleasure for me indeed to see so many finance ministers from all over the world gathered here to show their deep concern about climate change,” President Yudhoyono said in his welcoming address.
The president said it had been estimated that at least US$200 billion was needed per year to invest in universal climate change.
Therefore, he added, finance ministers around the world should be involved in the discussions on the climate change issue.
“This is the first finance ministers` meeting on climate change ever held so far,” the Indonesian head of state said.
He said that developing countries were in need of incentives and a conducive situation to attract investors who were prepared to develop clean technology and reduce carbon emission.
Yudhoyono also mentioned the need for funds for adaptation and mitigation.
The head of state further said that any action taken by any country to overcome climate change could either benefit or harm other countries and therefore it was necessary for them to arrive at common perceptions.
The finance ministers, according to Yudhoyono, could exert a favorable influence on multilateral cooperation talks.
He also said that good coordination among the ministers of environment, energy, forestry, and finance was needed to take concrete steps toward the solution of the climate change problem.
Yudhoyono said Indonesia had high hope that the UN conference on climate change in Bali would succeed in devising a new mechanism to deal with climate change after the first period of the Kyoto Protocol had expired.
The ministers, from about 20 nations, would debate issues ranging from the potential for carbon markets to help cut industrial emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels to incentives for people to put solar panels on the roof at home.
At the main talks, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was to arrive in his debut on the world stage a week after his new Labor government ratified the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, isolating the United States as the only developed nation outside the pact.
And Kyoto marks its 10th birthday on Tuesday — it was agreed in the Japanese city of the same name on Dec. 11, 1997. UN backers of the pact plan to celebrate with a birthday cake.