I Do Care With Climate Change, How About You?

Don't you think that Indonesia has a serious problem?

Our country, Indonesia, is one of the most vulnerable country on climate change. With more than 17,000 islands, more than 250 million people, Indonesia is the greatest economy in Southeast Asia. But our status as the regional powerhouse is threatened by climate change. Recall that Indonesia has more than 17,000 islands, it has 81,000 km of coastlines, making it the second longest coastline after Canada. Rising sea level makes our coastline is not safe anymore for our people. In fact, 42 million people lives along the coastline and they are threatened of being swept away by the tides. Not only their possessions, but their lives themselves are at risk.

Excessive water usage is also amplifies the threat faced by Indonesians. The land is declining, the aquifer is going to be empty, and the water is making its way to people's settlements in form of flood. On the other hand, many areas are experiencing drought because of the natural phenomenon of El Nino and La Nina. Not only flood, there are many forms of disasters that Indonesia has to face, e.g. forest and land fires, landslides, storms and drought.

Indonesia is a country packed with natural disasters by default. Climate change has changed our people's way of life. They are the potential victims of climate change. One of the most impacted people are the traditional farmers. They used to rely on the traditional calendar which were accurate at that time on predicting the seasons. But, they can't do it anymore now. 

They have to adapt with warmer temperatures, interchangeable seasons, and unpredictable weather. This is one of most realistic prove of loss and damage about climate change, that they are really have to sacrifice more economic resources e.g. money and they precious possessions to fund their agriculture land that is no longer as productive as it used to be. How if they can't adapt with this new style of agriculture? They have to find a new job, which is pretty difficult because they often don't have any other skills but farming, or migrate to another place. This causes a new form of loss and damage that they lost their relationships with their neighbourhood and have to start all over again.

Indonesia still copes with inequality problem and climate change makes it even worse. There are still gap in socio-economic sector, and people will migrate to wealthier areas, even if the destination area has already faced climate change problem that threatens their economic activity.

But still, we have to raise awareness of climate change to not only people in Indonesia, but also the world. We can include these vulnerable people needs to be discussed in higher-level panel forum to increase their life quality. We can help to fix early warning system to help people to evacuate if there is a disaster coming. We can ask the academic institution to cooperate to make a better life for those vulnerable people.

I do care with climate change, how about you?