Four decades of aggressive development have stripped Indonesia's forests nearly half bare since the time when a young Barack Obama lived there from 1967 to 1971. In June, the U.S. president plans to revisit his childhood home as he aims to forge closer ties with the emerging but often overlooked Asia-Pacific power. Climate change will be a top agenda item in developing a new U.S.-Indonesia bilateral partnership, administration officials said in a briefing last week. Go to story #1

The World Bank has announced $400 million to help double Indonesia's geothermal energy capacity, part of a broad effort at the bank to ramp up climate change spending in the developing world. Indonesian leaders estimate the country has about 28,100 megawatts of geothermal capacity -- the equivalent of about 12 billion barrels of oil. They are aiming to make the renewable power a major source of energy in the coming years, a goal that Indonesian officials note will require hefty foreign investments. Go to story #2