REDD+ agenda in Doha

Agus P. Sari, Jakarta | Opinion | Fri, November 30 2012, 8:02 AM

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The concept of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) has been touted as one of the success stories of international negotiation on climate change.

REDD+ addresses one-fifth of those annual global emissions that had not been addressed under the Kyoto Protocol.

Pouring forth almost 6 billion tons in 2000, Indonesia was the largest producer of forestry and land use–based greenhouse gases. Consequently, the national action plan for the reduction of emission of greenhouse gases (RANGRK), is dominated by cutting production from forestry and land use. REDD+ is the largest item on Indonesia’s climate change agenda.

The 18th Conference of the Parties (COP18) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is now underway in Doha. REDD+, especially its financing, will be high up the agenda.

Negotiations about REDD+ in Doha will be as follows. First, REDD+ is expected to be financed through “results-based action”. Emission reductions need to be demonstrated and verified before financing takes place, regardless of where the money comes from.

Second, since REDD+ financing is based largely on results, a national forestry monitoring system (which includes reporting, and verification) needs to be agreed upon. Confronting those directly responsible for deforestation is essential in reducing the ongoing destruction.

While deforestation is a big issue, it is not the only issue on the national agenda, and it will be important to ensure that other social and environmental objectives are not compromised by the implementation of REDD+ on the ground.

Third, REDD+ is mostly about carbon and changes the carbon content of forests. But forests are not just about carbon. There are many other ecological, social and cultural concerns in the forest environment which are not measurable by simply counting tons of carbon. More, better forests are not just as a weapon against change.

Protected and expanded forests are good for helping the ecosystem, including us humans, adapt to climate change. Whether and how these non-carbon-based urgencies are integrated into REDD+ remains to be seen.

Fourth, full implementation of REDD+ requires new institutions. A registry, for example, of worldwide activity to keep track emissions seems essential. There are proposals to establish a REDD+ board, though not all parties are for it. Another proposal is the establishment of a carbon reserve bank. This also needs to be negotiated.

Fifth, financing is the hottest topic in REDD+. To make a reduction of 1 billion tons in emissions by 2020 as mandated by RANGRK, Indonesia needs about US$5–$10 billion, assuming a cost of $5–$10 per ton. While up to $1 billion may be made available through the letter of intent for the government of Norway, more is required.

Two more billion dollars may be available to Indonesia from bilateral and multilateral public financing. The remainder — up to $7 billion — may have to be financed through the private sector.

Whether the newly-established Green Climate Fund with funds expected to be at least $100 billion per year by 2020 should open a special window for REDD+ is also to be discussed.

How and to what extent private sector involvement can be done remains to be negotiated in Doha. Whether it is done through market and non-market mechanisms alike, whether REDD+ actions can be used as offset on developed countries’ emissions through a carbon market are issues that are very far from being agreed upon.

Brazil and Bolivia, for example, remain of the opinion that REDD+ should not be a market mechanism, especially not an emissions offset mechanism. Finding funds in the public sector, however, is a great challenge, especially against the backdrop of global economic gloom.

Sixth, finally, the ambition of developed countries to reduce emissions has not been aggressive enough. The overwhelming amount of potential REDD+ credits available to offset emission reduction targets by developed countries will make their previous attempts to solve the problem irrelevant.

This year marks year the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

A new commitment period must commence. A new set of emission reduction commitments by developed countries needs to be put in place. Ambition must be aggressive if Doha is to keep climate change at bay.

The writer is chair of the working group on funding instruments, Presidential Task Force on the Institutional Preparation for REDD+. The opinions expressed are his own.

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Asian action critical in region and in Doha

Bindu N. Lohani, Manila | Opinion | Fri, November 30 2012, 8:17 AM

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The jury may still be out on the link between climate change and natural disasters. But one thing is clear: Weather-related disasters are increasing in both frequency and intensity.

Witness the string of severe recent floods across Asia — from Pakistan, to Thailand, to the Philippines — and Hurricane Sandy in the US, which have vividly shown us how extreme weather events can bring entire countries to a virtual standstill. Volatile weather extremes are hitting Asia and the Pacific more often than any other region of the world.

This gives the Asia-Pacific region a huge stake in mitigating global temperature rise while adapting to already rising climate change impacts. Sixty percent of the region’s people rely on highly climate-sensitive farms, forests and fisheries for their livelihoods. Seven out of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change and disasters caused by natural hazards are in Asia and the Pacific. A decrease in fresh water availability could affect more than one billion Asian people by 2050.

The region has borne the brunt of the physical and economic damage of increased disasters. It accounted for 38 percent of global disaster-related economic losses between 1980 and 2009. People in Asia and the Pacific are four times more likely to be affected by disasters than those in Africa, and 25 times more likely than in Europe or North America.

A recent report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) noted that storms and floods, in particular, are becoming endemic to the region, and their increasing frequency and severity can slash economic growth and development. And as we have seen time and again, it is the poorest and most vulnerable citizens who suffer the most. We cannot hope to bring an end to poverty without building resilience to climate change and these associated events.

The challenge is to tackle both at the same time. We need to mobilize massive funds for climate change adaptation — around US$40 billion a year for Asia and the Pacific would be a very conservative estimate. Investing in disaster risk reduction as part of adaptation only makes sense; it has been estimated that every dollar spent to reduce risk saves at least $4 in future relief and rehabilitation costs.

Clearly there is a need to more closely integrate climate change and disaster-related activities. Doing so would present its own challenges, given the different — sometimes competing — interests involved: disaster risk reduction is a well-established area of work handled mainly by engineers, whereas climate change adaptation is relatively new and falls more within the purview of environmental specialists. Nonetheless, we should make every effort possible to do what is most prudent and effective.

The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) have endorsed $1.5 billion to ADB for mitigation and adaptation cofinancing within Asia and the Pacific. The CIF’s pilot program for climate resilience has thus far allocated $278 million to ADB for projects in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Tonga and the Pacific regionally.

Much can be done to supplement these efforts. The region needs, for example, an Asia-Pacific disaster risk insurance scheme, and it would benefit from the wider introduction of catastrophe bonds. Such innovative forms of insurance can increase resilience by forcing communities to model, price and manage the risks of climate change.

A climate-induced disaster fund for the region that would channel critically needed post-disaster assistance into building resilience against future catastrophic events should also be considered.

So far, few developing Asian countries have focused on disaster risks in their economic development plans. As a region, we no longer have a choice. We must invest in disaster prevention — not only in infrastructure, but also in the region’s social development. Neglecting the looming threats of increased weather-related disasters would put millions of Asia’s most vulnerable people at increased risk of poverty, ill health and premature death.

As delegates gather for the 18th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Doha, Qatar, this issue must be brought to the forefront through enhanced discussion, consideration of innovative solutions, and commitments to act.

The Asia and Pacific region has a critical role to play in reaching a solution to the climate crisis. Its population and economies face ever increasing risks from the consequences of climate change, and future economic growth must be decoupled from the rapid expansion of greenhouse gas emissions.

The impacts are felt at a very personal and local level, and it is critical that we create, invest in, and act upon solutions to improve the resilience of communities across Asia and the Pacific. However, this is a global problem, which will require a global solution involving the full participation of all countries.

The writer is the vice president for knowledge management and sustainable development of the Asian Development Bank.

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Fighting global climate change with ‘monozukuri’

Rachmat Gobel, Jakarta | Opinion | Fri, November 30 2012, 10:39 AM

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Fighting climate change requires a certain attitude. The best attitude that I can think of is monozukuri.

Monozukuri is a Japanese expression that is at once simple and mysterious. Its literal meaning is “making things”. However, lying profoundly behind the act of making is an attitude that not only seeks perfection but does so for its own sake. The rewards that come with excellence — money, fame or at least peer recognition — are important, but they are not the purpose of monozukuri.

Its real intention is to set standards that will be emulated down the generations, thus providing continuity to human expectations and behavior. In a nutshell, monozukuri is a way of looking at work whose result is not just a product but the creation and sustenance of a way of life, a culture.

Monozukuri reveals itself in everything from the labors of an anonymous Japanese worker in a carproduction line to the work of a famous shrine–builder who chisels away quietly at perfection in order to keep a traditional occupation alive. Monozukuri is behind the high standards that Japanese artisans have come to expect of themselves, and others of them. Japanese society values a good carpenter by judging him against a good doctor or a good engineer; his status is not tied his occupation but to the degree of professionalism that he exhibits in his field, as they do in theirs.

This respect for excellence has much to do with Japan’s ability to combine meritocracy and egalitarianism.

What does all this have to do with climate change? Quite a lot, I would argue.

First, an attitude drawing on monozukuri would enable us to see the world as a single ecosystem for whose general upkeep each of us has a personal responsibility — just as Japanese workers see their individual efforts as contributing to the overall excellence of their society.

Secondly, world leaders would be forced to respond to this public sentiment by going beyond pious declarations of support for the global climate. Japanese managers are known for their rigorous self-expectations because they are in charge of workers who possess that attitude themselves. A slack manager would lose the respect of his staff. Similarly, an insincere statesman or politician should lose his standing in the eyes of an enlightened public. There is nothing like a demanding public to keep politicians on their ecological toes.

Thirdly, monozukuri obliges its practitioner to look beyond immediate gratification and invest his energies and imagination in values that will live into the future. Similarly, fighting climate change will not make us rich overnight, but it will help our children and grandchildren to have jobs and opportunities tomorrow and the day after in a sustainable economy.

Fourthly, the global fight against climate change is polluted by quarrels between the developed and developing worlds. The advanced economies owe much of their prosperity today to the unbridled environmental theft they have carried out since the Industrial Revolution. The developing economies see no reason why they should restrict their own growth to pay the price for others’ misdemeanors.

If we look purely for meritocracy — getting as much out of a system as we deserve — there is hardly an equitable way of settling the environmental dispute. But if we believe in egalitarianism — which is based on treating humans as ends and not as means — the world becomes an extended family in which member-nations, rich or poor, have a pooled responsibility for the upkeep of the ecological household.

Environmental monozukuri is a statement of faith in a common future for humanity. It reflects the spirit of the African proverb that says no one inherits anything on earth except to hand it down to the next generation. Meanwhile, as another African proverb goes, it takes a whole village to bring up a child. Likewise, it takes a whole world for a country to be ecologically sound.

As citizens of an island nation blessed with biodiversity — just as the Japanese enjoy the benediction of a protective culture that has seen them through so much — Indonesians are well-placed to adopt monozukuri as their weapon of choice in fighting climate change. All our long-term development plans must continue to revolve around the concept of environmental sustainability.

How can we transform monozukuri into practical ways of fighting climate change? Green technology provides an answer.

Hybrid cars, energy-efficient lighting, clean coal technology and solar panels are examples of the forward-looking technology that will make the economy greener. These options may be costly at first but they will become less expensive as the eco-friendly economy goes mainstream and economies of scale come into operation.

In this context, I would like to echo the recent comments made by Indroyono Soesilo, secretary of the Coordinating People’s Welfare Minister. He pointed out that Indonesia, a developing country, plays a significant role in absorbing carbon dioxide emissions. However, when developing countries seek to embrace green technology, they are hamstrung by expensive copyright regulations imposed by industrialized nations.

This Western mindset of having their cake and eating it too goes against the need for global monozukuri in employing green technology to resist climate change.

It is time we all learnt from the Japanese how to bridge the individual and the social, the national and the international. We can choose to hang separately or hang together.

I much prefer to live in a world which gives me something to look forward to. Monozukuri gives me faith that I am not alone.

The writer is chairman of the Indonesian Renewable Energy Society (METI) and president commissioner of the PT Panasonic Gobel Indonesia. The opinions expressed are his own.

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RI leadership amid ASEAN’s challenges

Mohamad Zakaria Al-Anshori, Wellington | Opinion | Thu, November 29 2012, 9:29 AM

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The 21st ASEAN Summit and its related meetings in Cambodia concluded last week, with the regional group adopting a number of initiatives. In the political area, the summit approved the Bali Concord III plan of action for 2013 to 2017 and the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) and launched the ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.

The AHRD is considered a milestone in implementing the ASEAN Charter. Likewise, the AHRD demonstrates the strong commitment of ASEAN states to promote and protect human rights, although critics say many aspects of human rights principles that are internationally observed have been watered down during the negotiation process to approve the document.

In terms of economics, ASEAN leaders launched the ASEAN Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which according to the ASEAN Secretariat, will combine ASEAN’s free trade agreements (FTAs) with Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand into a major trading bloc. If successful, the RCEP will become the world’s biggest free trade arrangement. The leaders also claimed progress in implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community blueprint.

Despite many substantial achievements, there are some issues that remain unaddressed, especially the South China Sea dispute. The same issue also prevented the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) last July from issuing a joint communiqué, with many accusing the host Cambodia of succumbing to Chinese pressure.

Smarting from the split, ASEAN officials and leaders have sought a unified public appearance. They avoided arguing publicly through the mass media. However, the setback recurred on Nov. 19, when according to Reuters, Cambodia said that ASEAN member nations had reached a consensus to not internationalize territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Responding to Cambodia’s statement, the Philippines openly disagreed, saying that there was no such consensus reached concerning the issue.

We therefore can map out two different stances for ASEAN in relation to the South China Sea. The first is in favor of internalization of the issue, by seeking a rules-based and multilateral approach to settle the disputes. Some member states like the Philippines and Vietnam hold this position, with support from the US.

The second is the stance reflects the Chinese position and would prevent the issue from international handling. China’s basic position is that the disputes should be discussed on a bilateral basis. Proponents of this stance include Cambodia and Laos. They tend to prefer to confine the issue to the existing ASEAN-China mechanism.

As it is commonly known, China and the Philippines along with Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam have been long engaged in territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

ASEAN’s failure to show unity on South China Sea disputes indicates a real challenge for the regional grouping to realize the ASEAN Community by Dec. 31, 2015. This also raises questions on the centrality of ASEAN when dealing with its external partners in the formation of a regional architecture.

With the division among ASEAN states on the South China Sea, Indonesia should show its assertiveness as a natural leader and first among equals in ASEAN. The country is expected to be able to play important role vis-a-vis the various interests larger countries, especially the US and China, in the region.

It might be possible to look at the concept of Indonesia as the natural leader of ASEAN through KJ Holsti’s natural role conception (NRC) theory in foreign policy. Holsti mainly focused on the idea of the self-conception of the elites. In this case, government elites may embrace various beliefs or images of the identity of the state. Holsti’s theory provides a theory for the way that a state acts in the international system.

In line with NRC theory, Indonesia’s elites traditionally have viewed their country as a leader regionally and beyond. Indonesia’s conception of itself as regional and international leader might be congruent with the free and active principles of foreign policy. The concept of a regional leader might be said as one of the direct or indirect manifestations of the free and active policy.

With such as conception, according to Leifer, Indonesia has the conviction that it is entitled to play a leading role in maintaining peace, security, and stability in the region.

The efforts of Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa to rescue ASEAN from its division in the aftermath of the AMM in July can be viewed from an NRC perspective. At that time, not long after the meeting, Marty toured ASEAN capitals to narrow the position gaps among ASEAN states, especially between Cambodia and the Philippines, on the South China Sea.

Indonesia has long been praised for its leadership in the region. Since the inception of ASEAN, there has been evidence of the country’s leadership in ASEAN. Under Soeharto, for example, Indonesia played an important role in peaceful settlements in Cambodia and the southern Philippines. Likewise, Jakarta successfully mediated claims by Manila and Kuala Lumpur over Sabah in 1970s.

Indonesia has also demonstrated its lead role through various initiatives to advance ASEAN. The country initiated Bali Concord III in 2011, to map out the interactions and engagement of ASEAN in the global community.

Indonesia also initiated the birth of the monumental Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), known as Bali Concord I, in 1976 and Bali Concord II in 2003. The concords marked the outstanding leadership of Indonesia in ASEAN.

Indonesia’s character as ASEAN’s natural leader and its remarkable record of regional leadership should boost its confidence in dealing with major external powers, particularly on the South China Sea dispute and maintain the group’s centrality in the evolving Asia Pacific regional architecture.

The writer works for the Foreign Ministry. The opinions expressed are his own.

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REDD: Reducing decentralization

Pungky Widiaryanto, Ann Arbor, Michigan | Opinion | Wed, November 28 2012, 10:43 AM

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On Oct. 22, the House of Representatives endorsed formation of the province of North Kalimantan and regencies of Pangandaran, South Coast Lampung, South Manokwari and Arfak Mountains. A study jointly conducted by researchers from the London School of Economics (LSE), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and South Dakota State University (SDSU) found that advancement in regional autonomy could make it more difficult for Indonesia to meet the deforestation target as the main objective of Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+).

REDD+ was originally an incentive offered to developing countries for reducing emissions from deforestation (RED) in order to mitigate climate change. Indonesia as a tropical forest country can generate substantial new economic income through the REDD+ scheme. Payment will require demonstrated emissions reduction through improved forest protection, sustainable forest management and enhancement of carbon stocks. For Indonesia, the main priority of REDD+ is reducing deforestation.

A key factor cofounding good forest governance, including centralized regime, is that most drivers of tropical deforestation originate outside the traditional forestry sector.

In the context of decentralization in forest governance, Agrawal, a forest expert from the University of Michigan, argues that decentralized forest resources management in developing nations such as Indonesia is believed to be “the most significant, most distinctive and most visible shift in national environmental policies since the late 1980.” Decentralization seems to allow stakeholders to redefine property rights and management of forests.

Decentralization, moreover, could also improve governance, counter international force, increase efficiency on responsibilities and respond to local community’s demand.

Even though the outcomes of decentralization vary, effective decentralization reforms have increased local actors’ benefit and property rights in natural resources, declined costs of protection and delivered opportunities for biodiversity conservation.

Agrawal also finds that 80 forest commons in 10 countries that adopt rule-making autonomy at the local level are associated with greater forest carbon storage and higher livelihood benefits.

Meanwhile, at current international negotiations, REDD+ is a proposed performance-based mechanism under negotiation through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in which developed country donors, corporations and individuals will compensate developing countries for reducing forest emissions, including through market mechanisms. The ambitious idea of addressing governance problems also changes the scope of REDD+ from only reducing emission projects to provide benefits to developing countries with high opportunity costs when they are able to curb deforestation and forest conversion.

The incentive from developed countries, dominated by industrialized countries, will be delivered based on reports that detail how forested developing countries deal with the deforestation. Preserving forests and preventing forest conversion into other uses will result in the loss of opportunities.

Agriculture expansion, oil palm plantations for biofuel and infrastructure development, such as road and mining projects, will drive the economy but contribute to deforestation more than logging.

Under REDD+, recipient governments will formulate strategies for national land use and forest sector planning, stakeholder negotiations, tenure clarification, carbon brokering, national-level carbon accounting, and provision of funds and services to local actors. A national approach is considered important to the success of REDD+ projects since it can help avoid leakage, ensure permanence, and provide reliable monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV).

This approach might be a reason for Jakarta to reverse decentralization to centralization, as centralized forest governance could effectively reduce deforestation.

Furthermore, according to research conducted by Ghazoul, an expert from the Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, REDD+ could further limit opportunities for local economies to grow and reduce tax revenue. A variety of indirect economic, social and political impacts will potentially occur, for example a loss of employment and revenue generation from raw material processing and other value-adding downstream industries.

Donor countries may be not attracted to invest in such regions, particularly if REDD+ requires long-term contractual agreements that tie land to forest cover.

Consequently, reduced investment might lead to poor infrastructure and telecommunication, limited mobility and market access, lower quality of public services such as education and health, less supply of reliable energy and water and reduced access to bank credit. Such a chronic underdevelopment would impact population at local and
regional scales.

Looking beyond the purely economic implications of REDD+, it will also be necessary to consider less tangible, but equally important political and socioeconomic issues relating to national and local development. These include potential social disruption of communities, which may happen if cultivators who depend on forest clearing activities are sidelined, and dissociation of agricultural societies from their land. Committing land to REDD+ project may constrain the future livelihood options of local communities, as is arguably the case with protected area systems.

Providing alternative employment opportunities, even if these were available, might incur social costs for people forced to adjust to new livelihood cultures, as well as costs associated with acquiring the new knowledge and skills needed to successfully engage in such new employment opportunities.

To deal with decentralization and social economic impacts, REDD+ needs to acknowledge and provide adequate compensation for loss of both direct and indirect contributions made by the forestry and other sectors to local and national economies.

The writer is studying at the department of forestry, Michigan State University in the US.

ASEAN’s Summit and the morning after

Simon Tay, Jakarta | Opinion | Wed, November 28 2012, 10:46 AM

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The ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh that just ended drew considerable international attention even amid missiles in
the Gaza and another crisis in Europe. Much attention has little to do intrinsically with the group of 10 countries.

The summit’s significance is magnified through the lens of US-China competition.

US President Barack Obama took his first overseas trip since winning re-election. This was perhaps the last visit by the outgoing Chinese Premier Wen Jiao-Bao. Over the last two years, the Obama administration has made a concerted “pivot” to the region, whereas Beijing has seen alarm raised with neighbors over territorial disputes.

Obama did well. Recall his first visit in 2009, when he was assailed in the American press for being too soft. This time, he pushed and persuaded on both economics and politics.

In Bangkok, the US reminded Thais of their long-standing alliance and prodded them toward entering the US-led trans-pacific partnership (TPP) for closer economic links. In Yangon, Obama — the first American president to visit the country — met reformist President Thein Sein, and uttered the word, “Myanmar”.

He then embraced — quite literally and heartily — iconic opposition figure Aung San Suu Kyi and called the country “Burma”. The sensitive human rights question about problems in the Rakhine state was raised but had to be expected, given criticism that a presidential visit being premature.

Add this to strengthened ties with Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines, and the Obama administration’s first term will be noted for re-engaging ASEAN. Credit goes to State Secretary Hillary Clinton, who has been especially proactive in paving the way for the president.

But another factor has been China. Concerns about Beijing’s ambitions have made other Asians much more receptive to American attention.

It doesn’t help that Beijing stands accused of influencing Cambodia as the ASEAN chair so the group’s July ministerial meeting floundered. This summit too showed signs of disunity when Cambodia’s draft statement led several leaders to reiterate their positions and insist on re-wording the text to salvage the situation.

Amid this, Obama did not need to stoke anxieties about China. He had instead the luxury of urging all sides to show restraint. When Asians can’t get along with each other, the position of the USA is reinforced.

Intra-Asian differences will continue after the summit. The Philippines — most vocal about Chinese maritime claims — has called for a meeting with other ASEAN claimants — Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. China is pointedly excluded.

How Chinese leaders now respond can potentially shape relations with the region as a whole.

So far China has punished the Philippines by cutting off tourist visits, bought over priced rice from Thailand’s Ying Luck government, asserted influence over Cambodia and provoked ASEAN schism. These cannot be Beijing’s mainstays.

China has always said it supports ASEAN centrality and its response needs instead to be broader and forward looking.

After all, China’s economy continues to grow while Washington DC stands at the edge of a financial cliff. So while Asians have welcomed Obama, questions linger over the American wherewithal to remain engaged and grow alongside Asians. China should put trade and investment at the front and center in its engagement with the rest of Asia — and not territorial disputes.

Accordingly, China would do well to give attention to something else that was launched at the Summit. This is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), to link Asia from China to India, with ASEAN as the hub, and others like Australia also in the frame. Despite all Obama’s charisma, the US is not within this economic group and
instead champions the TPP.

The RCEP sets the stage for a new stage in Asian regionalism, centered on economics. If it can make the agreed deadline of 2015, this wider effort would support ASEAN’s own target for community integration. The RCEP is still at a preliminary stage and there are many obstacles ahead.

But if it can progress, the RCEP can provide many avenues to broaden the agenda and create more positive perceptions about China’s role in Asia. Beijing should do all it can to help ASEAN move forward with this.

The writer is chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs and teaches international law at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. He is the author of Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post Crisis Divide from America.

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Toward a more relevant Australia (Part 2 of 2)

Paul Keating, Melbourne | Opinion | Tue, November 27 2012, 10:05 AM

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From now on we have to concentrate on where we can be effective and where we can make the greatest difference. I believe that is fundamentally in Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia occupies the fulcrum between South West Asia and North East Asia; the fortunes of the Indian Ocean and the sub-continent vis-a-vis those of continental Asia, China and the western Pacific.

In a geopolitical sense, this region is a place of amity, a zone of peace and cooperation, perched between the two most populous neighborhoods on earth: broadly, Pakistan and India and their ocean, and China and Japan and their ocean.

Northern Australia is adjacent the fulcrum point. It is completely natural therefore, that Australia be engaged there; certainly, with Indonesia but preferably, with the wider ASEAN. This grouping represents the security architecture
of Southeast Asia, the one with which we can have real dialogue and add substance.

In the longer run we should be a member of it — formalizing the many trade, commercial and political interests we already share. This is the natural place for Australia to belong; indeed, the one to which we should attribute primacy.

The utility of such a foreign policy would be to distil the essence of our primary national interests, such that the naturalness of it gave it a self-reinforcing consistency. And on that note, I was pleased to see recently the Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, articulate a policy of closer engagement with ASEAN.

We have made some important movements in our dialogue with ASEAN and its member states, among them our inclusion in the East Asia Summit from its inaugural meeting in 2005.

The latter development came about relatively late in the term of the Howard government, when it came to the realization that closer integration with Asia was an imperative for Australia, rather than being a Keating obsession — a contrary view which had formerly driven its policy. Alexander Downer negotiated our membership of the East Asia Summit, while Kevin Rudd effectively lobbied ASEAN and China to include the United States and Russia.

Good and significant as these changes were, they were of their essence, of a foreign policy kind. What they were not, were policies designed to make our general community more relevant to the nations of ASEAN — to set our broader relationships on firmer foundations.

In recent years, our relations with countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have been focused on transactional issues of marginal long term significance; refugee management and live cattle exports come to mind.

In the meantime, policy toward our nearest, largest neighbor, Indonesia, has languished, lacking framework, judgments of magnitude and coherence.

It is as if Indonesia remains as it was before the Asian financial crisis — before its remarkable transition to democracy and before the re-firing of its wealth machinery.

How things go in the Indonesian archipelago, in many respects, so go we. Indonesia remains the place where Australia’s strategic bread is buttered. No country is more important to us — and it is a country which has shown enormous tolerance and goodwill toward us. Focus on this country should be a major imperative driving our foreign policy.

The fourth largest country in the world, a secular democracy, the largest Muslim state, Indonesia’s vast archipelago straddles the air and sea approaches to our country. No major power in or beyond the wider region could hope to have the capacity to project forces toward Australia, certainly to our north and west, without needing to transit Indonesia.

I have always thought Indonesia will become our most important strategic partner. The need of this will become more apparent as its economy gets stronger.

Already, on a purchasing power parity basis, the Indonesian economy is larger than our own. Because population is the principal driver of gross domestic product (GDP), particularly with the ubiquity of technology and capital, Indonesia’s economy is likely to be at least twice as large as Australia’s and in time, even larger.

Indeed, a recent study by McKinsey and Company, forecast that by 2030, Indonesia’s economy would be larger than either Britain’s or Germany’s.

How might we feel with a massive economy to our immediate north, in an archipelago approaching 300 million people? And a country, which by then, would probably have naval and air forces commensurate with its economic wealth.

The fact is, Indonesia is building the weight to stand on its own feet, both economically and militarily, against anything that might come its way — either from the South China Sea or the Indian Ocean.

The question is what will that weight mean for us? An adversary with whom we failed to come to terms in good and propitious times or a partner to share common cause in our own view of the region and the wider world?

The answer to that question will best be settled by Australia positively discriminating in its attitude and in its efforts toward Indonesia, removing the ambivalence which has traditionally informed our approach. In this way, there is every likelihood that Indonesia would respond in kind, diminishing its own ambivalence toward us.

Whichever way we cut it, Australia must lay a bigger bet on its relationship with Indonesia. And this has to be cultural and commercial as well as political. The Australian people are unlikely to beat a path to Java or to Sumatra without public policy in this country divining the way.

Now that Australia is front and center in the fastest growing part of the world as never before, our future has to amount to more than simply managing alliances. Effective at that as we have been in the past, we are now compelled to be more relevant to the dynamic region around us.

This must mean that our opportunities to exercise independence and independence of action will be greater than they have ever been.

Not to measure up to this challenge would be to run the risk of being seen as a derivative power, perpetually in search of a strategic guarantor, a Western outpost, seemingly unable to confidently make its own way in the world.

Surely we have reached the point where we have to turn away from that scenario, recognize the realities of our geography and strike out on our own.

The writer was prime minister of Australia, 1991-1996. This article is based on his address “The Keith Murdoch Oration” with the theme “Asia in the New Order: Australia’s Diminishing Sphere of Influence” delivered at the State Library of Victoria on Nov. 14.

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Toward a more relevant Australia (Part 1 of 2)

Paul Keating, Melbourne | Opinion | Mon, November 26 2012, 10:07 AM

Klipping The Jakarta Post

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Paper Edition | Page: 7

When I was the prime minister of Australia, I gave enormous time and attention to the development of bilateral relationships, most notably with Indonesia. I think I grasped, perhaps more than any of my predecessors, the singular importance to Australia and to its security, of the vast archipelago to our immediate north.

I understood that the advent of Gen. Soeharto’s New Order government had brought peace and stability to our region, as it had to support for the building of ASEAN itself. It turned out I had been right in assuming that president Soeharto possessed a generally benign view of Australia, notwithstanding the preoccupation of the Australian media with the events in Balibo two
decades earlier.

I was completely determined to establish a totally new and durable basis for our relationship with Indonesia other than the one we had which saw everything through the prism of Timor Leste.

History has well recorded that this period was a high point in Australia’s relationship with Indonesia from which I was able to propose and then with president Soeharto, build a political relationship based around regular meetings of a broad ministerial forum and a new strategic relationship built around a defense cooperation treaty of a kind our two countries had never had nor earlier could have contemplated.

Called the Agreement on Maintaining Security, it was not simply a defense cooperation agreement — it had within it an active element — an agreement to consult one another in the event of adverse challenges and to consider individual or joint measures to respond.

In other words, the Agreement on Maintaining Security was, in effect, a contingent mutual defense pact and one negotiated with our nearest largest neighbor. The document was a strategic dream for Australia with at least as much realpolitik and clout as the treaty we have with the United States; ANZUS.

This was get-it-done foreign policy. Australia acting independently and in its own interests, pursuing its own objectives, filling the void which followed the thunderclap which ended the Cold War.

These were the kind of moves which Australian foreign policy was able to make in the 1990s. Gareth Evans, who was foreign minister in both the Hawke and Keating governments, also succeeded in a number of international initiatives; perhaps the most important being the ASEAN Regional Forum, the defense and security dialogue, operating within the aegis of ASEAN; the Cambodia Peace Accords and our sponsorship of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The point I want to make tonight is that, I believe, this era of effective foreign policy activism has passed. Our sense of independence has flagged and as it flagged, we have rolled back into an easy accommodation with the foreign policy objectives of the United States. More latterly, our respect for the foreign policy objectives of the United States has superimposed itself on what should otherwise be the foreign policy objectives of Australia.

The days when, as prime minister of Australia, I was able to wrest the Chinese premier into a multilateral body shared with the president of the United States, when I was able to bring the virtual head of the Non-Aligned Movement, president Soeharto, into a structure which included the United States, indeed into a structure with China to boot, are behind us.

The United States and China will now not encourage us to propose and build structures of the kind we have in the past. In the 20 years since I put the APEC Leaders’ Meeting together, China has become the second major economic power in the world; it does not need us to help construct its foreign policy, any more than the United States needs us to insinuate ourselves onto China to its account.

That is not to say we cannot be influential at the margin, on either or both of them — we probably can and should be. But we have been traded down in the big stroke business. Even states like Indonesia are dubious of us because they do not see us making our way in the world or their world other than in a manner deferential to other powers, especially the United States.

This became apparent during John Howard’s prime ministership; it has remained apparent under the prime ministerships of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. After playing the deputy sheriff, John Howard had us dancing to the tune of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, while upon the release of the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd, as Prime Minister of Australia, had been advising the United States to reserve the military option against them.

During the current prime ministership, that of Julia Gillard, the US President Barack Obama, made an oral and policy assault on China and its polity, from the lower chamber of our Parliament House. This brought immediate pangs of disquiet from the Indonesian foreign minister and later from his president.

The fact is, Australia’s former sphere of influence is diminishing.

Our membership of the Anglosphere through the post-War years and down through the Cold War, did give us influence in the temples of power — but that power came from the victory of World War II and our associate membership of the West. That world has changed. Now, we have to be propelled not by regard of withering associations but by our enlightened sense of self. Knowing who we are and what we are and what we want. And not only what we want, having a solid idea about how we get it.

This discourse leads to one conclusion: We will always be best being ourselves, exercising our ingenuity where it matters most, where we are most relevant, where our interests mostly coalesce and that is in the neighborhood — the place we live. Recognizing that our general membership of ‘the West’ was most relevant to us while ever ‘the West’ was the dominant global grouping - but that that period is now passing. What is not passing and what will not pass is our geopolitical positioning. The immutability of our need to successfully treat with and adapt to the neighborhood — a neighborhood which, save for New Zealand, is completely non-Western.

The secular change in the diminished growth potential of the West vis-à-vis that of Asia and South Asia and the ‘catch up’ in productivity and living standards going on there will mean that, from now on, our security linkages with the West will seem more incongruous than during the post-War years.

While we will always have a close relationship with the United States based on our shared history and our similar cultures, it is obvious that the right organizing principle for our security is to be integral to the region — to be part of it rather than insulating ourselves from it, hanging on in barely requited faith, to attenuated linkages with the relatively declining West.

The writer was prime minister of Australia, 1991-1996. This article is based on his address “The Keith Murdoch Oration” with the theme “Asia in the New Order: Australia’s Diminishing Sphere of Influence” delivered at the State Library of Victoria on Nov. 14, 2012.

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