《雅加达邮报》2015年10月26日讯 白宫周一表示,奥巴马希望在会见印尼总统佐科时讨论气候问题。据路透社消息,两国将会讨论贸易,军事和海上合作等议题。
US President Barack Obama is expected to discuss climate issues when he meets with Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Monday, the White House said on Friday.
The two leaders, who are scheduled to meet at the White House, are also likely to talk about trade, defense and maritime cooperation, White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters in a daily briefing, as quoted by Reuters.
Before leaving the country on Saturday, members of the President’s entourage said the meeting would focus on business issues and would include a meeting with the US Chamber of Commerce and a stopover in Silicon Valley.
Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said that the state visit aimed at securing business agreements.
“This visit is a deliverable-oriented visit,” Retno said earlier this week. “In general, there will be lots of MoUs [memorandums of understanding] and B2B [business-to-business agreements]. There will be a G2G [government-to-government] MoU signing, but there will be even more B2B signing, because that will be the red meat of the visit.”
While climate issues are not a top priority for Jokowi, environmental groups have called on the President to pave the way for cooperation on the environment with the US government and civil society as Indonesia is in the spotlight for its inability to eliminate annual land and forest fires, which contribute significantly to global emissions.
“There’s a good chance that the US will ask about the issue of forest fires. I don’t know whether it will be a subject of discussion, but it is best [that Jokowi] prepare himself,” I Nyoman N. Suryadiputra of the Wetlands International Indonesia program recently said.
Jokowi, who will be in the US from Oct. 25 to 29, is scheduled to sign a business deal with the US Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 26.
On Oct. 27, Jokowi is expected to meet with the US foreign commerce committee and fund managers at The Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington DC. On the same day, he will also deliver a speech at US think tank Brookings Institution.
On the second leg of the visit in San Francisco, Jokowi will meet with leaders from Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook.
US media were upbeat on environmental cooperation between the two countries, especially with the blazing forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
An op-ed article in The New York Times suggests that, in return for US help to curb forest fires, Obama could get Jokowi to commit to a moratorium on peatlands conversion.
“Mr. Obama should build on this momentum and help [Jokowi] implement measures now being discussed in Indonesia: a moratorium on all conversion of peatlands; re-wetting of degraded peatlands; a robust plan to monitor illegal land clearing; and a pledge to condition provinces’ access to funding on low deforestation rates,” it says.
Jonah Blank, an expert on Asia at RAND Corp., told Associated Press that one area where Jokowi had a chance to make his mark with Obama was on climate change. His visit comes ahead of a global climate change summit in Paris in December, where the US will be pushing nations to set binding targets for reducing emissions.
Indonesia is major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers estimate that since September emissions from Indonesia’s rampant land and forest fires exceeded the average daily emissions from all US economic activity. That is because many of the fires are on peatlands, which are extremely rich in carbon.
Jakarta has pledged a 29-percent reduction in emissions by 2030, but provided few details on how it will do it. Blank said Jakarta had also spoken of upping that target to 41 percent if it gets billions of dollars in foreign aid.
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