Special Speech| 219

Emil Salim (President's Council of Advisors, Indonesia)
Special Speech, November 16, 2009RASHOMON IN CLIMATE CHANGE
His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince,Your Excellency Former Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu,
Chairman of Global Environmental Action, Juro Saito,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear Friends.
Post-war Japan’s film-industry was famous for its artistic and moral prone movies thatastonished the world. One of the famous films that got the 1953 Academy Award wasRashomon created by Director Akira Kurosawa. The film unfolds the views of four charactersof witnessing the murder of a woman’s husband. Each of the four characters, a bandit, themurdered samurai, the samurai’s wife and a woodcutter has different viewpoint, perception,
judgment and personal interest on why the husband was murdered.
And we, the movie audience, could not easily come to a verdict on who is the realmurderer. The film demonstrated that truth has many faces.
The global environment today is “murdered” by the disease of “global warming andclimate change”. For thousands of year’s global environment has given life to diverse genes,
species and ecosystems with fresh air, fertile soil, clean water and comfortable climate. In
such global environment, human beings came into existence to live and multiply.
Unlike flora and fauna, human beings have brains and the capacity to create. Man
discovers the power of energy in fossil fuel. Steam engines soon emerge. Human beings
became able to create “man-made environments”, empowered by fossil fuel based energythat ignited industrial revolution.
Nature creates genes, species and ecosystems. Human beings however, cannot create butare only able to transform elements of nature, such as trees into wooden houses and fossil
fuel into energy. But by transforming nature, man creates pollution that is not absorbed byand remained in nature.
Before the industrial revolution 1780 total polluted concentration of CO2 emissions was
280 ppm. Since industrialization and subsequent economic growth, concentration of CO2emissions grew to 315 ppm (1930), 330 ppm (1970), 360 ppm (1990), 380 ppm (2008) and ifworld development continue the “business as usual” model, by 2050 will reach 500 ppm.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned us that the world needs to stabilize
concentration of CO2 emissions by 2050 at the threshold level of 450-550 ppm with global
temperature to rise to 2.0-2.8 degrees Celsius above the average global temperature of preindustrialization level of the year 1780.
A global temperature higher than this threshold of 2.0-2.8 degrees Celsius will change
climate, melt ice and snow in North Pole and Antarctic, water molecules will expand andsea level will rise. Heat waves will increase storms and hurricanes. Rain season will be
unpredictable, shorter and more intense, while dry season will be longer and dryer. Freshwater will be scarce. Desertification will increase. Erosion of genes, species and ecosystems
will take place at massive scale. New diseases will erupt. Global environment will behotter and change climate that leads towards massive destructions of genes, species andecosystems. The rising sea level will cause islands to submerge. This is not just a theory. InIndonesia, we know these threats well. We already lost at least 29 uninhabited islands. And
we will loose hundreds more by the year 2050.
Like in Rashomon, we ask, who is the villain in this mass destruction of the globalenvironment? Man has the ingenuity in creating man-made environment with scienceand technology. Man has been able to create man-made energy from fossil fuel. Man must
now also be responsible to create alternative to destructive fossil fuel through science andtechnology.
While the global environment is one, the contemporary world however is not one.
It is splintered into developed and developing countries, rich and poor countries, hightechnology advanced nations and the low technology underdeveloped nations.
And because of these differences in stages of development, the cause and theconsequences of “killing” the global environment is different.
During 1994-2004 CO2 emissions in 8 countries are as follow:
CO2 EMISSIONS 2004
(Million metric tons)
Country
United States
China
RussiaJapanIndia
UK
BrazilIndonesia

Ranking
1
2
3
4
5
8
19
20Emission 2004
5,912
4,707
1,685
1,262
1,113
580
337
308

CO2 emission 1994-2004
13%
68%
0%
16%
53%
2%
26%
48%

Source: Bacon and Bhattacharya, Growth and CO2 emissions, Environment Department, World Bank, 2007

| 221Because of dismantling inefficient polluting industries, Russian CO2 emissions level has
been low. Important is to note that developing countries show high CO2 emissions growthrate, while developed countries have low emissions growth rate. It is projected therefore
that in due course of development, the CO2 emissions level of China will soon surpass US,
India will surpass Japan and Brazil-Indonesia will surpass UK in the next decades.
Because developing countries’ CO2 emissions are rising fast, the developed countries
demand that developing countries too must put a cap on their CO 2 emissions asrequirement in the new protocol to be negotiated in Copenhagen, December 2009.
If we look to the issue of CO2 emission from the per capita point of view we obtain thefollowing picture:
EMISSIONS AND GDP PER CAPITA 2004
CountryUSUKJapan
RussiaBrazilChina
Indonesia
India

Emission ton per capita
20.01
9.75
9.87
11.71
1.83
3.60
1.40
1.02

GDP $ PPP per capita
36,23429,40627,080
9,018
7,406
5,441
3,245
2,831

Source: World Bank, 2007

On per capita basis all developing countries have low income and low emission tonlevel. While developed countries have high income and high emission ton per capita level.
If developing countries must reduce their CO2 emission ton level, the question is how
far can they go down without jeopardizing their responsibility to raise people’s per capita
income which is only 10-15% of the developed countries income per capita level?
Developing countries can pursue a different growth path, which leads toward a low
carbon society, mitigating CO2 emission and adaptation to a new model of developmentwith renewable energy, clean technology, desalination of sea water, heat-proof resistancerice seeds, hybrid automotives, low carbon mass transportation, green building architecture,compact urban development – all new features of development that is based on a different
and low carbon development technology.
But these technologies are available to the developing countries from developed
countries only at a price in a free market that ensures the protection of intellectual property
rights.

222 |Developing countries meanwhile, have to cope with survival first in this turbulent
global world. They initially need to rely on foreign developed countries’ economy to pullthem out of the poverty hole. But recent global financial crisis have demonstrated that thefinancial and banking architecture of developed countries have serious internal weaknesses
that has been able to plunge the global economy into a big crisis trap while taking along thedeveloping economies as well.
Indonesia is an example of a country that has followed diligently the rules of the market
economy in a political democratic setting. But experiences have shown that external factors
are always hampering the steady efforts of Indonesia to cope with poverty, political stability
and environmental sustainability.
External factors, such as the recent international financial crisis, have raised theIndonesian unemployment rate. The need for free, open and direct election has
substantiated our political democracy, but at a high financial burden. And Indonesia issituated on the verge of the “ring of fire” that provides fertile soil but also eruption ofearthquakes that raise the sufferings of the poor.
In the latest West Sumatra earthquake, September 2009, several villages have been
completely disappeared from earth due to landslide. More than a thousand people perishedand more than thousands houses and school building completely destroyed. And thishappened just when we commemorated 5 years of the Aceh Tsunami in 2004 which killed
more than 200,000 people. This West Sumatra earthquake is one of the many worst natural
disasters that Indonesia has to endure.
May I express herewith my appreciation and gratitude for the assistance provided by
the Japanese Government and people to reduce the sufferings of the Indonesian people,
victims of the West Sumatra earthquake.
But in spite of all this we, Indonesia, must move on.
Under these circumstances it is understandable that every dollar earned by the country
must be devoted to poverty alleviation. It also means that every dollar earned andchanneled for other purposes, such as buying technology for achieving low carbon societyin accordance to the rule of Intellectual Property Rights has a high cost of sacrificing
money to be used for poverty eradication.
Based on these experiences, it is understandable that developing countries, includingIndonesia, develop and adhere to the following principles of global development:
First, the recognition and implementation of the developing countries position on“common but differentiated responsibilities”;
Second, the acceptance of developing countries fair right of utilizing atmosphere fordevelopment, especially to serve the poor. The rights have been used thus far by developed| 223

nations for their own development. It is now our turn as developing country to utilize
atmosphere for our development;
Third, that the overriding trust of the people in a developing country is that theirgovernment strive for poverty alleviation to reach for a humane standard of life throughglobal development;
Fourth, that sustainable development with low carbon and low poverty level requires
transfer of technology and financial funding from the developed to the developing
economies that indicates global solidarity to save the only one livable planet;
It is within these principles that we must promote technologies and policies toward a
Low Carbon Society and save the globe from its extinction.
I therefore applaud Japan’s initiative that has always been in the forefront of thedeveloped nations’ effort, including the landmark Kyoto Protocol, to make this world abetter place for all humankind.
Prime Minister Hatoyama’s initiative to pledge in reducing greenhouse emission andideas to bolster low carbon technology transfer is an important step toward achieving thegoals.
Other Japan’s civil society’s initiatives, including the one taken by Institute for
Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), and Asia Pacific Forum for Environmentand Development (APFED), to name a few, in empowering stakeholders in developing
countries to undertake research activities and effectively take concrete measures in thefields are highly appreciated.
In closing, almost similar like the movie story of Rashomon, each nation has its reasonsbased on his viewpoint, perception, judgment and personal interests in confronting theissue of “how to settle the issue of killing life in the global environment.”
Unlike the movie viewers of the film Rashomon, where the truth has many faces, we,the humanity knows only one undeniable face of truth, that the unsustainable polluting
industrialization of the 20th century is the villain that has the ability to “kill” the globalenvironment. This unsustainable polluting industrial model must be changed into a low
carbon clean technology industrial development towards a low carbon society.
But to be viable it must be with no strings attached in a world with interdependency
living in harmony with nature and in a society without inequity and poverty.
Tokyo, 16 October 2009
Emil Salim – Jakarta, Indonesia

224 |Special Speech

Rashomon in
Climate Change
2009 GEA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

BY EMIL SALIMPRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ADVISORS ANDFORMER MINISTER OF THE ENVIRONMENTINDONESIA

16 – 17 OCTOBER 2009TOKYO, JAPANCO2 EMISSIONS 2004
(Million metric tons)
Country
United States
ChinaRussia
JapanIndia
UK
BrazilIndonesia

Ranking

Emission 2004

1234581920

5,912
4,707
1,685
1,262
1,113
580
337
308

CO2 emission 1994-2004
13%
68%
0%
16%
53%
2%
26%
48%

Source: Bacon and Bhattacharya, Growth and CO2 emissions, Environment Department, World Bank, 2007

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Special Speech

EMISSIONS AND GDP PER CAPITA
2004
Country:

Emission ton per capita:

USUK
Japan
RussiaBrazilChina
Indonesia
India

GDP $ PPP per capita

20.01
9.75
9.87
11.71
1.83
3.60
1.40
1.02

Source: World Bank, 2007

Thank you226 |36,23429,40627,080
9,018
7,406
5,441
3,245
2,831