December 7, 2010

Source: Jakarta Globe

Cancun, Mexico. Though Indonesia is not at high risk of extreme weather events, an expert said on Tuesday that the country’s vulnerability to environment disaster magnified the potential risk.

Armi Susandi, an Indonesian meteorological expert, said that while Indonesia did not experience extreme weather events that other countries suffered, such as typhoons and cyclones, it did not mean the government could sit back and relax.

He added the severity of the weather events that Indonesia faced was “nothing compared to other countries.”

“However, it doesn’t mean that we’re not affected by them,” said Armi, a member of the Indonesian delegation at the United Nations’ climate conference in Cancun.

“Just from the tail [of a storm], we can get very dry weather if it comes from the north or very wet weather if it comes from the south. And if it gets very dry, then the potential for forest fires also increases, which was exactly happened two years ago.”

Furthermore, the country’s vulnerability to storms magnifies the resulting damage, he said.

“It’s not the extreme weather that matters for Indonesia, but how prone we are,” Armi said.

“We have very low levels of resistance, so even if only a small part of the country is hit, the impact is tremendous.”

His warnings came as the World Climate Research Program released their report on increasing extreme weather events globally, such as tropical cyclones and hurricanes, as well as heat waves and cold snaps.

“When we observed these extreme events in the past, they were different in magnitude and frequency from what is happening now,” said Ghaseem R. Asrard, director of the WCRP.

Asrard gave the example of Russia, which has been experiencing heat waves from 2003 to 2010 the likes of which have not been seen since the 1500s.

He also quoted the 4th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment from 2007, which said heat waves had become more frequent and widespread. The evidence also showed there were more warm nights and fewer cold days.

However, Asrard said these extreme events were largely regional in nature, meaning their manifestations tended to be varied and could not be generalized at the global level.

But a separate study, also released to coincide with the talks in Cancun, says risks to Indonesia, specifically, are on the rise.

Titled “Climate Vulnerability Monitoring: The State of the Climate Crisis,” the report, put together by DARA, an international NGO focusing on aid to areas suffering from conflict and natural disasters, said the negative effects of climate change on Indonesia would “slightly increase” over the next 20 years, with consequences including higher disease rates, habitat loss and economic stresses.

International experts said the important issue now was how to adapt to these changes.

“Some vulnerable countries are becoming much more proactive in their actions, such as the Maldives, which is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2020, and Bangladesh, which has already put $100 billion of its own money into implementing a climate change action plan,” said Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

These countries cannot afford to wait for the world to save them, so they are taking matters into their own hands, he said.

Michael Zammit Cutajar, a former chief of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said countries could not deal with climate change without also addressing poverty, as there was a strong correlation between poverty and environmental vulnerability.

He also said countries needed to avoid the trap of defining which nations were the most vulnerable to climate change.

“Vulnerability and adaptation are [challenges] for all countries,” he said.