The Jakarta Post 11 Nov 09;
Environmental experts say the country is not a carbon emitter, countering a report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain’s development arm that ranked the country the world’s third-largest emitter after the US and China.
The report, which was released in 2007, said that Indonesia’s total annual emissions of carbon dioxide reached 3 billion tons after the US, the world’s top emitter with 6 billion tons, followed by China with 5 billion tons.
Nani Hendiarti, a marine researcher from the National Assessment and Application of Technology Agency (BPPT), said Tuesday that Indonesian waters absorbed more carbon than they released.
Nani said the conclusion was based on her study that analyzed data of sea temperatures from the last 24 years.
Her simulation showed that the country’s waters with cool average temperatures were larger than
areas with average warm tempe-ratures.
Cool seawater absorbs carbon, while warm seawater releases it.
“I have estimated that the average temperature of our cool waters is minus 0.18 degree Celcius, while our warm areas have an average temperature of 0.08 degree Celcius,” she said during a press conference held by the Association of the Indonesian Scholars of Oceanography in Jakarta.
“The research result shows the average temperature of cool waters is twice as large as the temperature of warmer seawater,” she said.
She added that over the last 24 years, Indonesian waters were characterized by cooler temperatures.
She acknowledged that Indonesia released huge amounts of carbon, but said the amount released was smaller than that absorbed.
“We have phytoplankton beneath our waters that absorbs carbon,” she said.
Phytoplankton obtains energy through the process of photo-synthesis.
“Photosynthesis is responsible for much of the oxygen present in the earth’s atmosphere. Therefore, it absorbs a lot of carbon to release oxygen.”
She estimated the number of Phytoplankton could reach a million cells per liter of water.
Edvin Aldrian, chairman of the Center of Air Quality and Climate Change at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), told the conference that sea temperatures had a more significant impact on the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere than illegal logging. (nia)
