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"Regional Review of the Economics of Climate Change in Southeast Asia"

Welcome Remarks by
James Nugent
Country Director, Indonesia Resident Mission
Asian Development Bank

23 May 2008
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia

• His Excellency, Paskah Suzetta, Minister of National Planning; Chairman, BAPPENAs
• His Excellency Martin Hatfull, Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Indonesia
• Dr. Emil Salim, Member of the Advisory Council to the President; and, Adviser for environment and sustainable development issues
• Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of the Asian Development Bank I am privileged to welcome you to the Indonesia National Consultation for the "Regional Review of the Economics of Climate Change in Southeast Asia".

At the outset, we would like to sincerely thank the Government of Indonesia for graciously hosting this event and for the excellent arrangements today, and to also thank the British Government for their generous assistance in financing this technical assistance. Excellencies, thank you.

This national consultation is very timely. The 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Stern Review Report alerted us of the serious development challenges posed by climate change. With its growing economies, Asia's share in global emissions of greenhouse gases is rapidly increasing with nearly one third of future global greenhouse gas emissions predicted to originate from Asia.

ADB is committed to assisting efforts of its partner countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. For Indonesia, these initiatives have included technical assistance projects to strengthen institutional capacity to process and promote CDM projects and support for development of the renewable energy sector.

However, over the past two years, only about 15% of ADB projects included environmental components or objectives and as the region's development bank, we must do more.

Management's response has been to include environment, including climate change, as one of three development agendas under Strategy 2020 : The Long-Term Strategic Framework of the ADB thru 2020.

To implement this framework, ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda announced a number of new initiatives related to climate change during the 41st Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors in Madrid earlier this month, including:

• ADB will provide over $150 million to co-finance clean energy projects through the Asia Pacific Carbon Fund,
• ADB will establish a Climate Change Fund, with an initial contribution from ADB resources of $40 million. and
• ADB will invest an additional $100 million in five funds in order to mobilize about $1 billion for clean energy over the next three years.

The regional technical assistance we are meeting on today is also consistent with this commitment. Through it ADB aims to contribute to the regional dialogue on economic costs and benefits of unilateral and regional actions on mitigation and adaptation measures, and to raise awareness of the urgency of climate change challenges and their socio-economic impact in Southeast Asia.

During the course of this consultation national and local experts will present the results of their preliminary scoping on impacts of climate change in Indonesia and dialogue with a distinguished group of local experts of key government agencies and research institutes involved in climate change.

Climate Change being a global public good we also hope that the recommendations put forward during this consultation will catalyze local, national and regional actions that contribute to global solutions.

We look forward to your fruitful discussions. Thank you.