Located in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is a country of 180 million people living in coastal regions. The country is formed by a group of islands with vast tropical forests and marine habitats that provide a wealth of ecosystem services such as clean air, and water. Due to its geographic location, Indonesia has always been vulnerable to Southeast Asia’s tropical storms. During the past two decades, Indonesia has been suffering from an increase in climate-related natural disasters and threats such as frequent torrid rainfalls due to rising sea levels, and flooding. This has coincided with accelerated urbanization and expansion of agricultural land use that has come at the expense of forested areas. The rise of urbanization has pressured Indonesia’s sustainable resource management and made its carbon rich peatlands and mangroves more vulnerable to fires that release large amounts of carbon in the atmosphere (USAID, 2023). The rise in sea levels in recent years has submerged large areas of Indonesia’s coastal regions and has caused land loss, property loss, population displacement, and death.
The weight of evidence strongly suggests that human activity has been a major contributor to global climate change. The graph below shows the changes in CO2 levels in correlation to temperature over 40 thousand years. While there has been a natural cyclical rise and fall of CO2 levels, which are positively correlated to changes in temperature levels, we see that, in the current millennium, the CO2 and temperature levels are persisting at their highest cyclical point and have refused to descend in to their natural down cycles. The most recent peak coincides with the industrial revolution and industrial expansion.
Historical data such as the above show that the recent rise of CO2 levels and persistence of maintaining the cycle high levels are not part of the natural cyclical movements CO2 and temperature levels. Evidence like this strongly indicates that the recent surge in CO2 and temperature levels is not part of normal variation, and point to increasing CO2 levels being associated with higher global temperatures. Many scientists believe that the recent persistence of CO2 and temperature at their cyclical high levels are due to global human activity (SNC2D, 2023).
Indonesia, the 16th largest economy in the world, is the 10th largest CO2 emitter in the world (USAID, 2023).
Despite being the 10th on the CO2 emission list, and not emitting as much as the top emitters, Indonesia has the misfortune of being in the relatively close proximity of the three of the top four emitters, china, India, and Russia (World Meter, 2023). It is not entirely in their control of how adversely they are affected by natural occurrences such as El Nino. Nor can they do much about rising sea levels caused by their vicinity to multiple top emitters. They, however, are in control of what they do internally about human activities by managing urbanization, curbing uncontrolled agricultural expansion, and reducing deforestation. In this report, will examine the effects of climate change, caused by multiple climate stressors (El Nino, human activity, and rising sea levels), on Indonesia’s coastal regions and ecosystem.
The image below shows the effect of different stressors (El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Sea level Rise (SLR), and Manual Human Activity (MHA) (Anggi Hapsari, K., et al, 21 March 2022).
We can see that the combined effect of El Nino, sea level rise, and human activity have a far more devastating effect on the Indonesian coastline than just the El Nino and sea level rise combined together. Human activity adds dangers of fires in areas that have been degraded from coastal development, urbanization and land conversion, to the effects of El Nino and Sea level rise.
To see devastation caused by rising sea levels, one can easily find articles and images such as these:
Residents wade through a waterlogged area in Kampung Melayu, East Jakarta.
Photo by Agung Fatma Putra/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The picture above is from 2020 when many residents of Jakarta had to wade through flood water. Those who survived the flood were at the risk of diseases due to bacteria, and other infectious organisms carried by flood water.
Yusuf, 20, stands in front of his home, which was destroyed by high waves due to rising
sea levels in Cemarajaya village, in Karawang regency, West Java, on January 5, 2023.
Credit: Garry Lotulung
The picture above depicts loss of property and livelihood suffered by Indonesians living in coastal regions due to flooding from rising sea levels. Experts predict that before 2050, thousands of small islands and millions of houses in coastal areas across Indonesia will be lost to rising sea levels caused by climate change. By that year, a third of Jakarta, which has been described as the world’s most rapidly sinking city, could be submerged (Lotulung, Garry, 2023).
The picture above is from Indonesia’s capital flooded in 2022 when 16 people died, and 1000s were affected by the flood (CTVNews, 2022).
Jakarta is home to 10 million people or 30 million including those in its greater
metropolitan area. [Dasril Roszandi/AFP]
The picture above is from 2020 when television footage and photos showed dozens of cars floating in muddy waters of Jakarta while soldiers and rescuers in rubber boats were struggling to evacuate children and the elderly who were holding out on the roofs of their squalid houses (Widodo, Joko, 2020).
There is not much that Indonesia can do about El Nino or the global climate change that causes the rising sea levels. Since their CO2 levels is significantly lower than the top emitters, they need a reduction in the CO2 levels of the top emitters to help stall the rising or perhaps lower the sea levels. Domestically, Indonesia may better be served by educating their people about the causes and consequences of climate change, and curb and reduce the negative impacts of human activities.
In an article for Columbia Climate School, Sharah Yunihar Saputra wrote that flooding is no longer an annual early year disaster in Indonesia. Indonesians can now expect monthly flooding. The article says that Indonesia ranks first in climate-change deniers. This is attributed to a lack of proper education and coverage by Indonesia’s government and media. Although the government has a number of programs on climate change, it still continues with increasing its coal production levels (Yunihar Saputra, Sharah, 2023). According to worldmeters.info, Indonesia is the 5th largest coal producer, and the 12th largest coal consumer in the world (worldometers.info, 2023). Coal extraction in Indonesia is done with open-pit mining, which requires massive clearing of forests and creation of large holes that would dramatically change the makeup of the landscape (Bulolo, Caroline, 2023). In addition to mining, other human activities such as crop and livestock farming as well as urbanization have contributed to deforestation, giving Indonesia the unfortunate distinction of being the 2nd country with the highest deforestation rate, following Brazil (worldpopulationreview.com, 2023).
In recent years, Indonesia has participated in global climate negations that began in 1992. In 2022, Indonesia updated its previous climate plan to be in accord with the Paris agreement which commits to reduce Green House Gas (GHG) emission by 32 percent on its own or by 43 percent by international assistance, by 2030. Indonesia has committed to reach net zero emission level by 2060 or sooner.
Indonesia has placed a moratorium on permits for clearing forest, established a peatland and mangrove restoration agency, and strengthened its forest fire fighting capabilities. On the energy production front, Indonesia has a plan to generate half of its power from renewable energy sources by 2030. Despite these plans, their deployment of renewable energy sources has been slow, with the country still relying heavily on coal for power generation (USAID, 2022).
Indonesia has sought help from international organizations such United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to help them implement and achieve their climate change policies and objectives. USAID has helped Indonesia by providing tools and information needed to adapt to effects of climate change. It has also promoted the use of data-driven approach to implement their climate change policies in areas of water resource management and water sanitization, and increase the country’s capacity for disaster management.
USAID has helped fund over $2.4 billion dollars for climate change adaptation. It has trained and helped farmers implement climate-resilient agriculture practices such as crop diversification, and changing tree species composition, and has educated them to better identify disaster threats, and develop better preparedness plans. Since 2015, USAID has helped Indonesia install one-fifth of its newly created renewable energy, and has facilitated over $1.6 billion in renewable energy investments. There are plans for installation of 2000 megawatts of clean energy by 2026.
The partnership of Indonesia and USAID has helped reduce 76 million tonnes of GHG emissions from the land-use sector, planted over 920000 coastal plants in disaster prone coastal areas to protect people from storms and tsunamis, and introduced a pilot project to use rainfall and forecast data to predict areas with increased fire risk due to dry conditions, and use techniques such as blocking canals to increase moisture levels as a measure of reducing fire risks (USAID, 2022).
USAID is not the only international organization helping Indonesia with its climate action plans and policies. In 2022, Indonesia’s climate plan that was released before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) still involved coal and did not indicate a pathway towards their contribution to keep global warming within target temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius (Bulolo, Caroline, 2022), but a foreign investment deal with International Partners Group (IPG) secured financing to help reach climate action targets (Bulolo, Caroline, 2022, whitehouse.gov, 2022).
The deal with IPG has the potential to accelerate the transition from coal if Indonesia’s government sets and implements appropriate policies to facilitate and, ideally, accelerate the transition to wean the country from its reliance on coal. Indonesia’s national global plan has been updated with a new nationally determined contribution (NDC) with a goal of becoming compliant with the global warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius. In 2022, Indonesia’s minister of environment and forestry said: “We will submit our second NDC in 2024, and we will include a coal phase-down in it as part of our step-wise approach within the framework of a just energy transition”. But, as Adila Isfandiari of Greenpeace Indonesia pointed out, the updated NDC still allowed “coal to produce at least 30% of country’s electricity in 2025, and 25% in 2050”. This is contradictory to United Nation (UN)’s climate science body’s recommendation of reduction coal in the electricity sector by at least 80%, and a complete phase out of coal by 2040 (Bulolo, Caroline, 2022).
On international and diplomatic fronts, Indonesia has not done enough to promote its climate change issues with other countries (Bulolo, Caroline, 2022). This is one area that the Indonesian government must actively pursue – especially since they are in relative proximity to three of the world’s largest CO2 emitters.
Bibliography
Websites
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