Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – Environmental campaigners expressed regret Wednesday about the absence of concrete government action to follow up on the UN-sponsored Bali conference on climate change.

Chalid Muhammad from the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi) said the public and activists should put more pressure on the government to take steps that will be effective in turning around human-induced global warming.

"The Bali 'party' is over. We reap applause from the world as a good host of conference. But the government takes no actions to save the planet," he said. "What we need now is real actions in the field or otherwise more people will become poor."

Most urgent, according to Chalid, was sharing knowledge with the public on how to save the planet as stipulated in the Bali road map. "The government must also show and detail concrete steps to stop emissions from the forestry," he said.

The Bali meeting was the world's largest conference held in 2007. It brought together officials and activists from 189 countries joining the Kyoto Protocol on the climate change.

The two-week meeting resulted in the Bali road map that required deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to combat severe impacts of climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only multilateral treaty which directly addresses efforts to turn around global warming, requires rich nations to reduce emissions by 5 percent starting this year. But Indonesia and other developing countries have no obligations to do so.

The Bali conference also adopted the so-called reduction of emissions from deforestation in developing countries (REDD) scheme. This paves the way for forested nations like Indonesia to be rewarded in dollars for successful efforts to protect forests.

But Chalid said the market mechanisms of the REDD and the carbon trading system would not be able to solve climate change problems.

Henry Saragih, director of an international farmers movement, La Via Campesina, shared Chalid's views.

"Saving the environment can not be accomplished solely through the market mechanism," said Henry, who was named by the English daily the Guardian as one of the 50 people who could save the planet. "It will fail. We want real actions from the world to cut emissions," he said.

Henry, who also chairs the Indonesian Farmers Union (SPI), said the Bali meeting didn't benefit local farmers. The government has said farmers would experience unpredictable and extreme weather events due to climate change. It said the changes in wet and dry seasons would have serious impacts on agricultural activities.

Data from the Agriculture Ministry shows that in 1990s harvest failures reached 100,000 tons per regency due to drought. The amount rose to 300,000 tons in 2000. There are currently about 60 million farmers out of 230 million people in the country.

Experts said that for every one Celsius decree increase in temperature, rice yields would decrease by about 10 percent.

Chalid and Henry also said they opposed the government's plan to set up a new team on climate change as a follow-up to the Bali conference. "It will not be effective... it would only waste more budget funds," Chalid said.