RI to bring up marine resources` carbon-absorbing capacity at UNFCCC

Nusa Dua (ANTARA News) - Marine resources are believed to have a potential carbon-absorbing capacity many times the capacity of forests and therefore the Indonesian delegation to the United Nations climate change conference here will draw the conference`s attention to the matter so that it can be taken up in discussions on efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

"The sea has a carbon-absorbing capacity many times the capacity of forests. With the amount of biomass phytoplankton on earth reaching only 0.05 percent compared to all plants on land, the sea has the same carbon-absorbing capacity as forests," Jana T Anggadiredja, chairman of the climate change conference`s Working Group on Technology Transfer, who is also a member of the Indonesian delegation, said here on Saturday.

Marine resources such as algae, coral reefs and mangrove trees need nutrition in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) to grow, he said.

Actually, the Indonesian delegation had already discussed the matter with at least 12 other countries taking part in the 12-day conference and would try to get it included in the agenda of the Conference of Parties (CoP), he said.

The countries to initiate the inclusion of the issue in the agenda of the CoP to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) included Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, India, Australia and New Zealand.

He said marine resource scientists were in the middle of preparing a methodology for calculating the capacity of marine resources to absorb carbon.

"In our rough scheme, global forests have a capacity of absorbing 5 billion tons of carbon and marine resources at least 6 billion tons of carbon per year. Meanwhile, fossil fuels emit up to 23 billion tons of carbon per year," he said.