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With the international community failing to agree on how to tackle climate change, Vice President Boediono on Thursday called for more research and action to mitigate and adapt to the new conditions.

“I cannot help but begin my remarks on a rather depressing note,” he said. “It is that we, governments of the world, have responded too slowly and too incoherently to act on the impending problems that will have, and are beginning to have, a serious impact on all of us, our lives and indeed eventually our existence as human beings.”

His statement came at the opening of an international climate change workshop on mitigation and adaptation strategies. The workshop, held at the Vice Presidential Palace in Jakarta, was attended by 25 foreign researchers from the University of Indonesia and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities World Institute (AWI).

Boediono said the Kyoto Protocol was not sufficient nor fully supported as a response to the imminent problems facing the world, while last year’s Copenhagen conference failed to produce the expected results.

“Now the [Kyoto] agreement is about to expire and there is no similar agreement, let alone a better one, in sight to take its place,” he said. “Faced with more immediate problems of dealing with the fallout of the financial and economic crises, the world does not seem to have sufficient will to tackle the longer-term, but by no means less serious, problem of climate change.

“It is for this reason, aside from the more substantive results and recommendations that I hope this workshop will be able to produce, it will also help strengthen our resolve to earnestly deal with the climate-change problem,” he said.

Boediono said he also expected the workshop would provide enlightenment on the consequences of climate change.

“But I must confess that, not being a scientist myself, but as one living my whole life in this tropical and archipelagic part of the world, the effects on our lives here have been very real,” he said. “Our agriculture, our fisheries, our forests, our water supplies have been much affected by the changing rhythms and indeed unpredictability of the weather.”

He said the best strategy for Indonesia was to start taking action to mitigate and adapt to the new conditions.

“But individual countries’ actions do not substitute for global, coordinated efforts,” he said. “The stakes are too great for each and every one of us, and time is running out. Indonesia stands ready to play an active and constructive role in the common endeavor.”

Jim Falk, director of research on climate change at AWI, said two things had to be done in Indonesia.

“We have to be able to cope with far more extreme events, high flooding, sea-level rise, decline in marine [life] and fisheries and much more,” he said.

“And at the same time we have to have in place policies to reduce the impact [of] global warming.”