Bali appears to have remained a main destination for Australians as the number of Australian tourists visiting Bali is only second to that of Japanese tourists, a local statistical official said.
Some 204,473 Australian tourists were among a total of 1,666,079 foreign tourists who visited Bali in 2007, the head of the local statistical bureau, Ida Komang Wisnu, said on Tuesday.
He said it was a significant increase compared with 2006 when the figure was only 137,000.
Meanwhile, the number of Japanese tourists visiting Indonesia in 2007 was recorded at 351,633, while tourists from Taiwan were in the third place with 138,849 people.
He said some of the tourists came to Bali not only for a vacation but also for business.
The head of the local foreign trade office, Ni Wayan Kusumawathi, separately said realization of Bali`s exports of handicraft and other non-oil/non-gas commodities to Australia increased to US$29 million, compared with only US25 million in 2006.
Indonesia has set itself the target of attracting seven million foreign tourists this year through its Visit Indonesia Year 2008 program.
Many provinces, including Papua, have prepared special packages to attract foreign tourists.
Source: TravelVideo
February 24th, 2008
Japanese outbound travel continues to slow, including to Hawaii.
For the year to date through November, Japanese arrivals to Hawaii dropped 3.5 percent to 1.2 million total visitors.
Hawaii remains the fourth most popular draw for Japanese, after China and South Korea, which are primarily of business travel destinations, and France.
Also according to the Japan National Travel Association, travel to the U.S. Mainland has declined 6.2 percent through November, while travel to Canada is down 14.8 percent through October.
Australia, New Zealand, Guam and the Northern Marianas also are seeing fewer Japanese travelers.
However, Japanese travel to Bali, Indonesia, is up 40.7 percent, while trips to Macau have increased 34.4 percent.
Source: Pacific Business News
January 19th, 2008
Bali’s reviving tourism industry has experienced a rise in the number of visitors from South Korea, who have long been considered the “non-traditional” tourist market for Indonesia.
Based on a figure from Bali’s tourism agency, as reported by Antara on Monday, the number of South Korean tourists rose by 54.1 percent to 121,858 last year from 79,072 in 2006. The agency forecasts the rising trend to continue this year.
The figure ranked Korea fourth after Japan, Australia and Taiwan as the countries that contributed the most foreign visitors to Bali last year.
Source: The Jakarta Post
January 19th, 2008
The setting of a limit on how much global temperatures are allowed to increase is an inherently political process.
The UN-led climate change conference in Bali will be remembered less for the “road map” that it eventually created than for a messy collision between the US and much of the rest of the world that kept onlookers transfixed. Environmental campaigners vilified the US for resisting EU pressure to pre-commit to specific temperature targets — namely, that global warming should be limited to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures.
This target has become a veritable commandment of campaigners since the EU embraced it in 1996. The media often refer to it, sometimes saying that unless it is met, climate change would be very dangerous for humanity. In fact, the target is not scientifically backed, and the suggestion that we could achieve it is entirely implausible.
Stopping temperatures from rising by more than 2°C would require draconian, instant emission reductions — for the OECD the reductions would have to be between 40 percent and 50 percent below their expected path in just 12 years. Even if political consensus could be found, the cost would be phenomenal: one model estimates that the total global cost would be around US$84 trillion, while the economic benefits would amount to just a seventh of this amount.
The suspiciously round figure of 2?C provides one clue to the fact this target is not based in science. The first peer-reviewed study that analyzed it, published last year, scathingly described it as being supported by “thin arguments, based on inadequate methods, sloppy reasoning, and selective citation from a very narrow set of studies.”
COSTS AND BENEFITS
In any case, a temperature limit is obviously a political rather than a scientific statement. Setting a limit means weighing up the costs and benefits of a world with temperatures at one level, and comparing them with the costs and benefits if we were to turn down the thermostat. This is an inherently political process.
Deciding how much we should let temperatures rise is like working out how many people should die in traffic accidents by adjusting the speed limit. There is no scientifically “correct” number of traffic deaths. Ideally, the number should be zero. But that would require lowering the limit to walking speed — at an immense cost to society.
It has been widely reported that the UN’s climate change panel (the IPCC) tells us that science shows that industrial countries’ emissions should be reduced by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020. This is simply incorrect: the IPCC’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning scientists are “policy neutral.”
Yet many journalists reported from Bali that the US had rejected the science of the 25 percent to 40 percent emission reduction. They lamented how the science in the final document had been relegated to a footnote, stressing how shortsighted, national self-interest had won out. But this interpretation is flatly wrong. If we look at the reference in the Bali footnote, the IPCC clearly says that emissions should be reduced 25 percent to 40 percent if you choose the low EU target but 0 percent to 25 percent or less if you choose a higher target. Nevertheless, like many newspapers, the International Herald Tribune wrote that the IPCC assessment said “that the temperature rise had to be limited to 2°C.”
Our one-sided focus on rapid reductions in CO2 emissions is both unnecessarily expensive and unlikely to succeed. At the Rio summit in 1992, we promised to cut emissions by 2000, yet overshot the target by 12 percent. In Kyoto in 1997, we promised even more radical emission cuts by 2010, which we will miss by 25 percent. Making ever-stronger promises on top of ever more failed promises is hardly the right way forward.
SMARTER OPTIONS
Instead, we should look for smarter policy options, like aiming to ensure that alternative energy technologies at reasonable prices will be available within the next 20 to 40 years. This could be achieved if all countries committed to spending 0.05 percent of GDP on research and development of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies. The cost — a relatively minor US$25 billion per year — would be almost 10 times cheaper than the Kyoto Protocol (and many more times cheaper than a standard Kyoto II). Yet it would increase R&D globally 10-fold.
Moreover, while it would embrace all countries, the rich would pay the larger share. It would let each country focus on its own vision of future energy needs, whether that means concentrating on renewable sources, nuclear energy, fusion, carbon storage, conservation, or searching for new and more exotic opportunities. It would also avoid ever-stronger incentives for free riding and ever-harder negotiations over ever more restrictive Kyoto-style treaties.
A sensible policy dialogue requires us to talk openly about our priorities. Often, there is a strong sentiment that we should do anything required to ameliorate a situation. But we don’t actually do that. In democracies, we debate how much to spend on different initiatives, knowing that we don’t have infinite resources, and that sometimes throwing more money at the problem isn’t the best answer.
When we talk about the environment, we know tougher restrictions will mean better protection, but with higher costs. Deciding what level of temperature change we should aim for — and how to achieve it — is a discussion that should engage all of us. But confusing political campaigning with scientific reason won’t help.
By Bjorn Lomborg.
Source: Taipei Times
January 19th, 2008
American climate negotiators refused to back down in their opposition to mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions Thursday, even as a U.S. Senate panel endorsed sharp reductions in pollution blamed for global warming.
The United States, the world’s largest producer of such gases, has resisted calls for strict limits on emissions at the U.N. climate conference, which is aimed at launching negotiations for an agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.
That stance suffered a blow when the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bill Wednesday to cut U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050 from electric power plants, manufacturing and transportation. The bill now goes to the full Senate.
U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson, however, said that would not impact Washington’s position at the international gathering in Bali.
“In our process, a vote for movement of a bill out of committee does not ensure its ultimate passage,” he told reporters. “I don’t know the details, but we will not alter our posture here.”
It was the first bill calling for mandatory U.S. limit on greenhouse gases to be taken up in Congress since global warming emerged as an environmental issue more than two decades ago.
Republican critics of the bill argued that limiting the emissions could become a hardship because of higher energy costs.
The two-week conference, which opened Monday, is already in a tense standoff between two camps, with the majority supporting mandatory emissions cuts on one side, and opponents such as the United States on the other, delegates said.
Scientists say the world must act quickly to slash greenhouse gas emissions and limit the rise in global temperatures or risk triggering devastating droughts and flooding, strangling world food production and killing off animal species.
Washington’s isolation in Bali has increased following Australia’s announcement Monday that it has reversed its opposition to the Kyoto pact and started the ratification process – winning applause at the conference’s opening session. That left the U.S. as the only industrialized nation to oppose the agreement.
The U.S. Senate action cheered environmentalists and others in Bali clamoring for dramatic action to stop global warming. U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer led off his daily briefing Thursday by hailing the “encouraging sign” from the United States.
“This is a very welcome development,” Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said of the Senate measure. “It shows the increasing isolation of the Bush administration in terms of U.S. policy on this issue.”
David Waskow, of the Oxfam humanitarian agency, said the Senate legislation was a positive signal to developing nations and others in Bali that America may be ready to assume a more active role in battling climate change.
“It’s one of the things that point the way to having the United States re-engage in the negotiations, and really I think in many ways demonstrates the U.S. leadership on these issues,” Waskow said.
Further momentum for serious greenhouse gas cuts, came from a petition released Thursday by a group of at least 215 climate scientists who urged the world to reduce emissions by half by 2050.
“We have to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as we possibly can,” said Australian climatologist Matthew England, a group spokesman. “It needs action. We’re talking about now.”
The United States and ally Japan are proposing that the post-Kyoto agreement favor voluntary emission targets, arguing that mandatory cuts would threaten economic growth which generates money needed to fund technology to effectively fight global warming.
Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, the host of the conference, said the mood in the closed-door negotiations was “serious, apprehensive,” but that there were hopes the U.S. would slowly change its stance.
“I think the United States will be judicious enough to accept the changes of atmosphere,” said Witoelar.
But U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns denied that Australia’s acceptance of the Kyoto accord would prompt Washington to do the same.
“We do not see eye-to-eye with Australia or many other countries on the wisdom of signing the Kyoto regime, that’s obvious,” Burns said in Sydney, Australia.
By Joseph Coleman
Source: SignOnSanDiego
December 9th, 2007
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