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Rob Daniel, the first secretary for climate change and economics at the British Embassy in Jakarta, is one of the people who has been busily working behind the scenes leading up to this week’s UN Climate Change Conference in Denmark.

Daniel moved to Jakarta last year, after being previously posted in Delhi. His team has been working with the Indonesian government to ensure the country’s officials are well-prepared for the Copenhagen summit, which has the potential to change the world.

What exactly does your role here in Jakarta involve?

My role in this particular embassy is focused on climate change and the negotiations for Copenhagen. Because it’s a big international agreement, there are lots of politics involved. So our team spends a lot of time working with the Indonesian government to ensure that it is prepared and it has all the information necessary to negotiate effectively this month.

How are preparations going?

It’s getting very hectic. Lots and lots of meetings that we have to provide briefings for and sending information back and forth to London about what’s going on. All this is happening more and more frequently, because there is lots of concern that Copenhagen is not going to produce a deal.

Are you worried that no deal is going to be made?

I’m a lot more optimistic than when I first arrived here a year ago. I think there will be a deal. Will it be a perfect deal? No, but what do you really expect? I mean, 150-odd countries trying to negotiate on something that’s going to happen to them in 40 years time is always going to be difficult. But Indonesia has moved ahead. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been doing some forward thinking and taking a leadership role, so from our standpoint and from Indonesia’s, it does look positive.

How significant a step was President Yudhoyono’s commitment to reduce emissions?

It was fundamental, it really was. Certainly we didn’t expect Indonesia to make such a forward step, but it changed the game with a lot of negotiators in other countries, because this is a global conversation that we are having. The fact that Indonesia has stepped forward and taken a very brave position has meant that other countries such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa also had to think. And not just developing countries, but developed countries too. The US and Japan have also had to sit up and look.

Also, I think it has propelled Indonesia on to the world stage, where it really ought to be. It’s a G-20 country, but so far has been pretty much overlooked by everyone apart from Australia. This has brought it forward. Everyone knows where Indonesia is now — not just because of Bali.

Things seem to be going well diplomatically, but how do you think Indonesia is doing with the practical side of reducing emissions?

Not good. The reality on the ground is very different to the politics. We were just discussing the fact that in Sumatra, the deforestation rate has gone up by 70 percent in the last year. Previously, it’s been going down, but last year it jumped suddenly, which is really not a good sign. That’s not to say that there’s not a willingness by the government to do something about climate change — what concerns us is its capability to do something.

What do you think are the most urgent steps that need to be taken?

A lot of it is down to governance really. There is a significant amount of corruption here, which is not helping. When you have forward-thinking policies that are developed, actually getting them to bear fruit is very difficult because of the underlying corruption issues.

If Indonesia keeps going down its current path of environmental degradation, what will some of the consequences be?

If you look at Sumatra now, it has 30 percent of its forest cover left. If things continue the way there are, in the next 10 years it will all be gone. There will be no forests, no tigers, no elephants, essentially no reason for tourists to go visit Sumatra because it will all be acacia trees and palm oil plantations. So they’d lose a significant proportion of the gross domestic product from tourism. On top of that, deforesting large tracts of land like that has an impact on local weather. Rainfall will change, and the forests actually keep the land area cooler. So the island itself will just get hotter and hotter and be more unbearable to live in.

I would say that, for Jakarta, the biggest thing would be public transport. Delhi had nightmarish traffic, but you could get across the city much quicker than you can in Jakarta, because it had public transport and was better planned. Things kept moving, however chaotically. So public transport would improve the life of Jakartans twofold. They’ll be able to get around quicker and they won’t choke from all the nasty fumes out there.