India Launches Star-Studded Campaign to Save Its Tigers

Jakarta Globe, February 09, 2010

Tigers are racing against time for survival. (AFP Photo)

As China prepares to usher in the Year of the Tiger next week, a massive publicity drive has begun in neighboring India, where the big cat is the national animal, to save it from extinction.

Conservation group World Wildlife Fund India has enlisted the support of sports stars and media celebrities to raise awareness of the threat, citing government estimates that there are just over 1,400 tigers left in the wild.

The campaign, fronted by India cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and top footballer Bhaichung Bhutia, was launched at the end of January and has so far seen more than 75,000 people pledge their support on www.saveourtigers.com.

Stripey, a cute tiger cub who has been featured in the campaign’s print, online and television advertisements, also has more than 70,000 fans on Facebook and over 2,500 followers on Twitter. “Just 1,411 left. You can make a difference,” the ad says, urging people to lobby politicians to do more to protect the animal, which once roamed freely across India and the subcontinent.

Diwakar Sharma, associate director for species conservation at WWF-India, said the organization had been delighted with the response which they hoped would push the issue up the political agenda. “Public opinion is a must for this,” he said. “Public-private partnership can change things …. What we can do is try to influence this public opinion.”

Feared and worshipped in equal measure, the tiger holds a special place for Indians and has become an icon of the country’s cultural and natural heritage. But despite conservation efforts over a number of years, Sharma said the situation was now “critical.” WWF-India has been working since 1973 to protect tigers, leading to the creation of special reserves and protected areas in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.

The global wild tiger population is thought to be at an all-time low of 3,200, down from about 20,000 in the 1980s and 100,000 a century ago. At the turn of the 20th century, there were an estimated 40,000 tigers in India. As elsewhere across South Asia, tiger numbers are threatened by population growth, with a loss of natural habitat to agriculture and available prey leading them to encroach on human settlements in search of food.

Hunting for sport — now banned worldwide but once seen as a status symbol, particularly during British colonial times — and poaching, particularly for traditional Chinese medicine, have had devastating effects on numbers.

A British-based organization, the Environmental Investigation Agency, said last year that China — which is believed to have fewer than 50 wild tigers — was turning a blind eye to the lucrative illegal trade in tiger parts and pelts.

Many of the body parts, like claws and bones, used for their supposed medicinal properties and as aphrodisiacs, are smuggled to China from India via Nepal.

New Delhi recently asked Beijing for its help to control trafficking but no official agreement was reached. Poachers killed 32 tigers last year and three already this year, according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India.

There has also been criticism surrounding government initiatives to crack down on poaching and wildlife crime.

Forestry officials say Maoist rebels, active in seven of India’s 38 tiger reserves, are also hindering conservation efforts.

“State governments are certainly not fully aware of the situation,” Sharma said. “The Indian federal structure allows states to be independent from central government. However policies are not implemented. “The environment is for all of our well-being, not only for tigers.

“We know that wherever tigers have gone, the forests are totally degraded with an effect on air and water quality.” 

AFP

Water freezes when heated

DiscoveryNews, by Tracy Staedter | Fri Feb 5, 2010 11:44 AM ET

Usually water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit and temperatures below that. But now scientists - reporting today in the journal Science -- have found a way to keep water in a liquid form at -40 degrees F. What's more, the scientists have found another way to make the water freeze when it's heated. It's a curious phenomenon to say the least, but the results could have implications for computer climate modeling.

Igor Lubomirsky and his colleagues from Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science achieved this unusual feat using dust-free water on materials called pyroelectric amorphous solids, which change their electrical charge depending on their temperature.

One of the materials the scientists looked at was lithium tantalate. At 12 degrees F, the material

When the scientists put dust-free water on the material, the freezing point no longer was the normal 32 degrees. In fact, the freezing point depended on the charge. The scientists were able to supercool the water down -40 F without it freezing.

A negative charge did the opposite. So when they applied a negative charge to the surface, thereby raising the temperature to 17, the "heated" water froze.

Another strange thing happened: on a positively charged surface, the water froze from the bottom up, and on a negatively charged surface, the water froze from the top down.

Lubomirsky told NPR that he wasn't sure yet why any of this happened.

But the implications of the role of dust in water should be considered in climate modeling, Franz Geiger, a physical chemist at Northwestern University in Illinois, told NPR. Ice in the atmosphere forms on dust particles and dust particles can have different electrical charges. That could influence temperatures, so it's a variable that could be taken into consideration in computer models of climate.

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Galapagos sea lions head for warm Peru waters

BBC News, Lima, By Dan Collyns

Galapagos sea lions are unique to the archipelago

A colony of sea lions endemic to the Galapagos Islands have moved 1,500km away, a Peru-based organisation which monitors the aquatic mammals has said.

The Organisation for Research and Conservation of Aquatic Animals says the sea lions have swum to northern Peru because of rising temperatures.

They says the temperature rise was caused by climate change.

Experts say it is the first time that Galapagos sea lions have set up a colony outside the islands.

The monitors say the water temperature in Piura, off the coast of northern Peru, has risen from 17C to 23C over the last 10 years.

The temperature is much closer to the sea temperature around the Galapagos Islands, which averages about 25C.

Now that the conditions of the sea around northern Peru are so similar to the Galapagos, they say, even more sea lions and other new marine species could start arriving.

Like so many native species in the Galapagos Islands, the sea lions are unique to the archipelago, located about 600 miles west of continental Ecuador.

Ever since the English naturalist, Charles Darwin, first visited the islands more than 150 years ago, they have become known as a living museum of evolution.

Now, thanks to global warming, that unique ecosystem could face unprecedented changes.

New Lightning Type Found Over Volcano?

Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News, Published February 3, 2010

Lightning illuminates a giant ash cloud during the eruption of Alaska's Redoubt Volcano on April 14, 2009. (Photograph courtesy Bretwood Higman)

It comes as no shock that a potentially new type of volcanic lightning had long eluded scientists: The bolts can be as short as about 3 feet (1 meter) long and last just a few milliseconds.

But advanced instruments and a two-month heads-up allowed researchers to finally confirm the "teeny little sparks" during a recent eruption of Alaska's Redoubt Volcano.

When Redoubt first began to rumble in late January 2009, volcanic seismologist Steve McNutt and colleagues scrambled to install various instruments near the volcano's vents.

Their quick efforts yielded unprecedented data when the mountain finally blew its top in March 2009.

McNutt, of the Alaska Volcano Observatory, had observed similar sparks during a 2006 eruption of Alaska's Augustine Volcano. The Redoubt Volcano data confirms the lightning's existence, he said.

Lightning, by Any Other Name

The newfound bolts join two other types of volcanic lightning, McNutt said: Large, spectacular "natural fireworks" that sometimes accompany eruptions and an intermediate type, which shoots up from a volcano's vents and reaches a length of about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers).

Both types of bigger, more obvious bolts occur when water droplets and ice particles interact with the volcano's plume of electrically charged ash, creating a sort of "dirty thunderstorm," McNutt said (see pictures of Redoubt Volcano's large lightning storms).

It's unknown how the smaller sparks form, though one possibility is that electrically charged silica—an ingredient of magma—interacts with the atmosphere when it bursts out of Earth's crust, he said.

Still, it's hard to say if the sparks indeed represent a new type of lightning, noted Martin Uman, a lightning expert at the University of Florida in Gainesville. That's because lightning—basically any discharge of electricity—has no scientific definition.

(Interactive: Make your own lightning strike.)

Pretty much any spark, from the static shock you get from touching a doorknob to the giant bolts that light up Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere, could be considered lightning, he said.

That ambiguity might be a good thing, he added: "It's more sexy to call it lightning, and scientists feel that way too."

Lightning Safety Boon

No matter what you call them, the tiny sparks near volcanoes' vents may offer a safety benefit, added Uman, who was not involved in the Redoubt Volcano study.

When a volcano gives off a hint of an impending eruption—called a precursor event—scientists could set up instruments near the vents to detect sparks as an eruption begins, which would then alert officials even sooner, he said.

Such a warning could be critical for air traffic, since ash emitted by volcanoes is especially hazardous to jet engines.

There's also an aesthetic pleasure in watching lightning events: Any kind of volcanic lightning is just "supergorgeous," Uman said. "It's one of our best natural phenomena."

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Methane: The New Climate Change Indicator

The Huffington Post, Gregory Unruh, February 3, 2010 12:20 PM

The failure to get enforceable commitments at December's Copenhagen climate talks has pushed back international action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But the important indicator for decision makers is likely not the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. It's methane. And it's on the rise.

Why does methane matter? Methane is an indicator that our climate future is slipping out of our control. Copenhagen focused on reducing CO2 emissions to mitigate or lessen climate change, which is important, but so far we have not been very successful. Global CO2 emissions have grown every year since the first climate treaty was signed at the 1992 Earth Summit. In fact, emissions are rapidly rising at about 2 parts per million a year, correlating with rising temperatures. And interestingly, rising temperatures -- not human emissions -- are spurring methane's rise.

Most anthropogenic (i.e. human-made) methane comes from flatulent livestock and belching frat boys. But recent field research has measured a spike in the amount of methane being released from non-human sources. The source appears to be arctic permafrost. Why? Arctic temperatures have increased by nearly a third in the last 5 years. As temps rise, the permafrost melts and releases the methane that has been locked away in frozen boggy soils for eons. A new study shows an approximately 30 percent increase in methane leaking from the Arctic.

So what, you ask? Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and its independent rise could swamp the impact of any hypothetical CO2 emissions reduction that comes out of the Copenhagen process. Yet, more disconcerting is the fact that rising methane increases warming. Increased warming means increased permafrost melting and more methane. A self-sustaining positive feedback could take hold and start runaway climate change.

The bottom line for decision makers is this: climate change will proceed whether or not global diplomats make a real climate deal in Mexico this November. Leaders in business, government and civil society need to take this fact seriously and start developing contingency plans to adapt to a changing climate. Mitigation efforts shouldn't stop, but we all must get ready to live in a climate different from the one we grew up in.

Gregory Unruh, Director of the Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management at Thunderbird

Follow Gregory Unruh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gregoryunruh

Error in Dutch polder data undermines trust in IPCC

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 4 February 2010 - 9:24am, by Rob Kievit

A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of
the Netherlands is currently below sea level.

In fact, just twenty percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.

Climate-sceptic MPs were quick to react. Conservative MP Helma Neppérus and Richard de Mos from the right-wing Freedom Party want the minister to explain to parliament how these figures were used to decide on national climate policy. "This may invalidate all claims that the last decades were the hottest ever," Mr De Mos said.

The incorrect figures which date back to 2007 were revealed on Wednesday by weekly Vrij Nederland. The Dutch Living Environment Planning Agency told reporters that the IPCC added two figures supplied by the agency: the area of the Netherlands which is below sea-level and the area which is susceptible to flooding. In fact, these areas overlap, so the figures should not have been combined to produce the 55 percent quoted by the IPCC.

The discovery comes just a week after a prediction about glaciers in the Himalayas proved wrong. Rather than disappearing by 2035, as IPCC reports claim, the mountain ice would last until 2350, according to the original research underlying the report.

Urbanisation

Questions are being asked on a broader scale too about climate change data. US researchers Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts, quoted in Dutch daily De Telegraaf, say that the perceived global temperature rise may be an result of changes in the measuring methods.

There used to be 6,000 measuring posts, they say, but now there are just 1,500. A number of weather stations in colder areas like Siberia and the Arctic were dismantled, while the remaining stations were in more moderate zones. As a consequence, data from colder areas were no longer used in the calculations.

D'Aleo and Watts also point to discrepancies between terrestrial and satellite measurements. Satellite weather stations have reported that the temperature of the earth's atmosphere has remained stable, with a slight fall since 2001.

Earth-based weather stations report an increase of warmth, which according to the two Americans reflects the process of urbanisation. Measuring posts that used to be in remote rural areas have gradually been surrounded by roads, buildings or industry, which all produce heat.

Solar activity

Dutch researchers reporting to Minister Cramer on Wednesday said that global warming appears to be slower than had been assumed. In a brochure published by the Dutch Platform for Communication on Climate Change (PCCC) the academics say that sunspot activity was relatively low over the past decade and will continue to be low for the foreseeable future.

The lower the solar activity is, the smaller the warming effect is. According to the PCCC, average temperature may even go down by 0.2 to 0.4 degrees, but they warn that this is just a slight dent in the much stronger rising trend. "The heat is still on," according to the PCCC report.

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News focus: RI mulling actions, cost to cut gas emissions

Antara News, Fardah, Wednesday, February 3, 2010 15:55 WIB

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian government has started mulling actions and calculating the cost to implement its plan to cut gas emissions by 26 percent in 2020 and by 41 percent with international support.

"In the spirit of thinking outside the box, in September this year Indonesia declared an emission reduction target of 26 percent of `business as usual` by 2020, and this can be increased to 41 percent with enhanced international assistance," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in his speech before participants of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), in Copenhagen in December 2009.

"As a non-Annex 1 country, we are actually not required to do this. But we read the stark scientific warnings of the IPCC. So we have set our new reduction target, because we want to be part of a global solution," the head of state added.

To follow-up the commitment, Indonesia presented an official seven-page report on its emission reduction target by 26 percent from current levels by 2020 to combat climate change, to the UN last January 31, 2010.

The non-binding Copenhagen accord set a Jan. 31 deadline for countries to confirm their participation in a deal brokered by the US in last month`s climate talks in Denmark.

Indonesia is currently preparing a legal umbrella in the form of a presidential decree to achieve the target of greenhouse gas reduction by 26 percent nationwide by 2020.

"The legal umbrella in the form of a presidential decree is still being prepared," the environment minister`s deputy for improvement of natural resource conservation and control of environment destruction, Masnellyarti Hilman, said when accompanying Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta at a press conference in Jakarta, last January.

She said the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) followed up the results of the coordination program in reducing gas emissions by implementing them into the National Action Plan for Dealing with Climate Change (RAN MAPI).

Based on the RAN MAPI six sectors are targeted for emission reduction, namely energy, transportation, processing industry, agriculture, forestry, waste processing and emissions from peat lands.

The forestry sector would become the main target for emissions reduction by the equivalent of 392 mega tons per year, followed by emissions reduction from peat lands by the equivalent of 48 mega tons a year and emissions reduction from waste processing by the equivalent of 48 mega tons a year, she said.

The next sectors are energy by the equivalent of 30 mega tons a year, transportation by the equivalent of eight mega tons a year, agriculture by the equivalent of eight megatons a year and processing industry by the equivalent of one megaton a year.

Masnellyarti said the six sectors had been elaborated in the National Communications II Indonesia report to the UNFCCC.

According to Law Number 32 of 2009 on environment protection and processing, the environment ministry is obliged to make an inventory of national greenhouse gas emissions.

"This will be used as the basis for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of the implementation of the efforts to achieve the target," she said.

As funding for the 26 percent emissions reduction program will come from domestic sources, the MRV is carried out domestically based on methods and procedures set by the environment ministry.

Meanwhile, the government has estimated that it would need around Rp400 trillion to reduce gas emissions by 26 percent until 2020.

"We hope not all of it must come from the government. The figure is dynamic or could still change," the secretary of the state minister for national development planning, Sjahrial Loetan, said recently.

He said at least there were some real programs that the government could do to achieve the goal such as maintaining peatlands and reforestation.

The two programs would be able to reduce emissions by around 22 to 24 percent. There are at least 34 million hectares of peatland under focus, consisting of young and old peatlands.

In addition, he said, there was a program to economize the use of energy which was expected to reduce emissions by around two percent. The government would promote the use of renewable energy sources and the use of gas to replace oil in power plants.

He said due to limited funds the government expected participation from various parties in the effort.

There had been funds available from abroad for supporting the program such as "from Britain totaling one million pounds and another 3.5 million pounds from there which will come in a couple of months. And after that they are committed to extend another 50 million pounds for over five years," he said.

More funds are also expected to come from several other countries such as the Netherlands, Norway and other Scandinavian countries.

"They wish to see our commitment first, if they are not corrupted. So far only Britain that has sent the money but some Scandinavian countries have already expressed their commitment," he said.

He said he hoped private parties particularly companies would participate in the effort through their corporate social responsibility program.

Meanwhile, Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan, on a separate occasion in Jakarta early January 2010, said the forestry sector would be a net sinker capable of absorbing up to 0.89 giga tons of CO2 by 2020.

The sector`s capability will contribute to efforts to reduce gas emissions by 14 percent out of a total of 26 percent in 2020, he said.

Greenpeace, however, said the government has not yet taken real action to fulfill this emission cut commitment so far.

"In 2010 the Indonesian government must show that they are serious about meeting their emission reduction targets by implementing a moratorium on deforestation and peatland clearance," Greenpeace Southeast Asia said on its website.

The international environmental NGO believed that a moratorium on forest and peatland destruction is the most effective way to meet Indonesia`s gas emission reduction targets.

Another NGO, Oxfam International East Asia Climate, is of the view that it is more important for Indonesia to prepare adaptations and mitigation on the impact of climate change for the poor than targeting emissions reduction.

"As Indonesia is not a country obliged to reduce carbon emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol, Indonesia could create a pilot project or strategy for adapting to climate change," Oxfam International East Asia Climate campaigner Rully Prayogashe said recently.

55 Nations Meet Copenhagen Deadline to Submit Emissions Plans

Jakarta Globe, John M. Broder, February 02, 2010

The United States is among the nations to have officially stated a goal to cut carbon emissions by 2020. (AFP Photo)

Washington. The climate change accord reached at Copenhagen in December passed its first test on Monday after countries responsible for the bulk of climate-altering pollution formally submitted their emissions reductions plans, meeting the agreement’s Jan. 31 deadline.

Most major nations — including the United States, the 27 nations of the European Union, China, India, Japan and Brazil — restated earlier pledges to curb emissions by 2020, some by promising absolute cuts, others by reducing the rate of increase from a business-as-usual curve.

In all, 55 developed and developing countries submitted emissions reduction plans to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body overseeing global negotiations. Two major nations — Mexico and Russia — did not submit plans.

UN officials said that the countries that have already filed plans account for 78 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally .

The so-called Copenhagen Accord was pasted together in the final hours of the UN-sponsored climate summit meeting that ended Dec. 19.

The skeletal agreement was not formally adopted by the conference, is not binding on the parties and sets no deadline for reaching a formal international climate change treaty.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations’ climate change office, said the submissions showed that the commitment to confront climate change on the part of the world’s nations is “beyond doubt,” but he urged countries to do more. “Greater ambition is required to meet the scale of the challenge,” he said.

Analysts said that even if all nations meet their promises, the world would still not be on a path to exceed the Copenhagen agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to less than 3.6 degrees above the pre-industrial era.

“The pledges put on the table to date do not put us on track to meet that goal and will make it very difficult for us politically and technically beyond 2020 to meet that target,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists .

Other aspects of the accord remain unresolved, including the question of financial aid for developing nations to adapt to climate changes and develop sustainable growth plans. The wealthy nations pledged nearly $30 billion in short-term support, but there is no mechanism in place to collect or distribute the money. Longer-term aid pledges remain just a concept.

Nonetheless, it was the first time that major developing nations, whose emissions are growing more quickly than the rest of the world’s, put on paper their plans for slowing production of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to warming .

China said it would reduce its carbon intensity — the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic activity — by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.

India said its carbon intensity would fall by 20 to 25 percent over the same period.

South Korea set an intensity target of 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Raekwon Chung, the South Korean ambassador for climate change, said that his nation’s target was set into law in December and that the government was preparing plans to implement it.

He said South Korea planned to invest 2 percent of its gross domestic product, about $86 billion a year, in green growth programs, including low-carbon energy production, new transportation systems and higher-efficiency building codes.

The major industrialized powers also repeated earlier pledges. The European Union said its 27 members would cut emissions by 20 to 30 percent over 1990 levels by 2020. Japan’s target is 25 percent over the same period.

The United States, in a submission last Thursday, repeated President Barack Obama’s promise to cut emissions “in the range of” 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels — but only if Congress enacts legislation that meets that goal, a far-from-certain prospect .

Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Resources Institute’s climate and energy program, urged Congress to act quickly on climate change legislation, or risk seeing the United States fall further behind in the competition to develop new low-carbon sources of energy.

“The pledges made by countries like Japan, China, Europe and India show a commitment to collective, transparent action on a scale never seen before,” she said in a statement. “The United States should have no doubt that these countries plan to build their economies with clean energy.”

The New York Times

Scientists on Alert After Hundreds of Earthquakes Daily Rattle Yellowstone National Park

The Cleveland Leader, by Leader Staff on February 1, 2010 - 11:37am.

Over the course of the past two weeks, more than one-hundred mostly small earthquakes per day, on average, have shaken up a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Researchers say that for the time being, the earthquake cluster is more of a cause of curiosity than alarm.

The earthquake zone is located about 10 miles northwest of the Old Faithful geyser, and is far from any road or community. The park is also relatively empty during the winter months. The swarms of earthquakes are relatively common, and a significant swarm was experienced there last year as well. Researchers say that it has shown little indication that it will build towards a larger event, such as a volcanic eruption that destroyed the Yellowstone region tens of thousands of years ago.

Scientists say that the current Yellowstone swarm does at least bear close observation due to its volume. As of Sunday, January 31, 2009, there had been 1,608 earthquakes at the park since January 17.

Henry Heasler, a coordinating scientist for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said:

“We’re not seeing a pattern that is really discernible yet." He added that plans were in place to intensify observations in the case that the swarm continued for a long time or got larger. "We're ready to ramp up," he said, which would include using flights to monitor the area.

Researchers at the University of Utah's Seismograph stations track the Yellowstone swarms, and say that they thought it was a coincidence that another large swarm of more than 1,000 earthquakes ahd struck the park just about a year ago. At the time, it was the second largest cluster recorded. This year's swarm, however, has overtaken the No. 2 spot. The largest recorded swarm was in 1985, when 3,000 quakes struck over the course of three months.

Dr. Heasler revealed that researchers use the park's geologic features, such as Old Faithful, as indicators of the quake activity. They look for changes in water temperature, or mud plumes in hot pools that otherwise run clear. He says that this swarm does not appear to have affected any of those natural monitors, emphasizing that analysis was on-going.

Park visitors are encouraged to help with research by reporting to park officials if they felt the ground shake. In general, attention to earthquakes has increased since the Haiti eathquake. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, visits to their Earthquake Hazards Program website have increased fivefold since the quake, to more than one million visits per day.

Joint venture to produce biofuel in Brazil

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 1 February 2010 - 3:33pm

Sugarcane field

(first generation biofuel)

Shell plans to enter into a joint venture with the Brazilian ethanol producer Cosan. The two companies have signed a declaration of intent for the production, distribution and sale of ethanol in Brazil.

Brazil makes widespread use of ethanol made from sugarcane as a biofuel. This will be the first time that Shell has been involved in the production of biofuel. The energy company believes that biofuels are the most realistic replacement for petrol in the transport sector in the next 20 years. Shell aims to invest 1.6 billion dollars in the joint venture in the next two years. The enterprise is intended to become market leader in Brazil, with 4500 points of sale and an annual production of 17 billion litres.

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RI submits emission cuts target to UN

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 02/01/2010 10:23 AM

Indonesia has lodged an official report on its emission reduction target to the UN on Sunday as doubts remain over the possibility of countries to reach an ambitious deal this year.

In its seven-page report, Indonesia reaffirmed its pledge toe cut emissions by 26 percent from current levels by 2020 to combat climate change.

“We have met the deadline and confirmed our target in the report to the UN,” head of the National Council on Climate Change (DNPI), Rachmat Witoelar, told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

“Everything we promised in the report will be carried out.”

A non-binding Copenhagen accord set a Jan. 31 deadline for countries to confirm their participation in a deal brokered by the US in last month’s climate talks in Denmark.

The US, which rejected binding targets under the Kyoto Protocol, has also submitted its official report to cut 17 percent of emissions by 2020 from 2005 levels.

The Copenhagen accord was made after a deadlock on emission cut targets between rich nations and emerging economies to fight climate change. The accord stipulates that countries should limit the rise of global temperature by 2 degrees Celsius.

DNPI secretary Agus Purnomo said Indonesia’s report did not include details on how it would meet the 26 percent emission cut.

“We already have a detailed concept on how to meet the target. The report to the UN, however, only stipulates that emission cuts would be from seven areas,” he said.

The seven sectors include deforestation, peat land, sustainable energy sources, energy efficiency, public transport and waste management.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono vowed to cut emissions last year before the Copenhagen talks, making Indonesia the first developing country to promise to voluntarily cut emissions despite plans to increase country’s economic growth.

With the 26 percent commitment, Indonesia has to allocate Rp83 trillion to cut 767 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) said that Sunday’s deadline for countries to lodge targets and details of emission reduction programs was opportunities for nations that pushed for the climate accord to show they were serious about it.

“Sunday is the self-imposed deadline for countries to lay out what they are actually going to do to keep the world out of the danger zone.” Kim Carstensen, leader of the WWF’s global climate initiative, said in a statement.

Carstensen said for the great majority countries, this implied a considerable increase in commitment so far.

“Emissions reductions on the table at Copenhagen were clearly setting us up for a world three or more degrees warmer, even without taking into account various large loopholes allowing for dubious emissions reductions claims and double counting of claims,” Carstensen said.

Meanwhile, UN climate chief Yvo De Boer said in Davos that he could not guarantee the upcoming deal in Mexico would reach the much-awaited legally binding treaty.