Global Warming in Indonesia
Indonesia May Lose 2,000 Islands to Warming - 1/29/07
Indonesia could lose about 2,000 islands by 2030 due to climate change, the country's environment minister said on Monday.
"It is very, very serious," Rachmat Witoelar said at a media conference attended by Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. climate treaty secretariat.
He said studies by U.N. experts showed that sea levels were expected to rise about 89 centimeters, or 35 inches, in 2030 which meant that about 2,000 mostly uninhabited small islets would be submerged.
Indonesia, which consists of 17,000 islands, has been trying to avert such a scenario by reducing reliance on fossil fuels and switching to biofuels, he said.
Biofuels can be substituted for fossil fuels and are seen as a way to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases which are believed to contribute to global warming.
Drought in Indonesia Could Intensify with Global Warming - 1/1/07
Annual variations in Indonesia's climate are largely determined by the El Niņo/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system. However, extreme drought can also result from the cooling of sea surface temperatures near Sumatra caused by a similar ocean-atmosphere phenomenon--the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).
These two systems and their past and present relationship to the Asian monsoon are examined in a recent study by Abram et al., reported in Nature. The scientists' findings reveal that drought frequency and duration in Indonesia can be expected to increase with global warming.
Utilizing geochemical records from fossil Indonesian corals, the authors were able to reconstruct regional temperature and precipitation variability since the middle Holocene epoch (about 6,500 years ago).
Their analysis demonstrated that IOD events in the middle Holocene (and, consequently, cooler and drier conditions in Indonesia) lasted longer than those of today.
Most scientists agree that as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increase and global temperature rises, the Asian monsoon, which has been decreasing in strength since the middle Holocene, is likely to intensify. A number of uncertainties prevail, however, including the impact of a changing ENSO and the influence of human-produced aerosols.
Indonesia May Seek Rainforest Conservation Compensation to Fight Global - 11/16/06
Indonesia may soon join the Coalition of Rainforest Nations in seeking compensation for rainforest conservation, according to a report from the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), a timber industry group.
ITTO said that Dadang Hilman, a member of the Indonesian delegation at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Nairobi, Kenya, was considering an invitation to join the coalition, which currently counts 15 member nations. The group, founded by Papua New Guinea, has proposed a rainforest compensation fund financed by industrialized nations seeking to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
Member countries would be paid based on the amount of deforestation they were able to prevent. The World Bank and the U.N. have recently voiced support for the plan which could potentially bring billions of some of the world's poorest people while helping to fight climate change and protecting biodiversity.
Indonesia has the world's second highest annual loss of forest cover after Brazil, but deforestation in the country has a disproportionate impact on global warming due to its peat forests which store large amounts of carbon.
By some estimates, the destruction of these ecosystems releases 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide a year -- about ten percent of world greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Fires in the peat ecosystems also release a cloud of smoke that causes pollution across southeast Asia.
Indonesian Wildfires Spark Global Warming Fears - 11/6/02
Burning peat bogs in Indonesia are releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, in a repeat of the environmental devastation that made headlines around the world five years ago.
Tropical peat bogs, such as those beneath the forests of Indonesia, are among the planet's largest stores of carbon. They release much more CO2 when they burn than when the trees that grow on them catch fire.
Now a team of scientists from Britain, Germany and Indonesia has reported that as Indonesia's forests burned in 1997, the smouldering peat beneath released as much as 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon into the air.
That is equivalent to 40 per cent of the global emissions from burning fossil fuels that year, and was the prime cause of the biggest annual increase in atmospheric CO2 levels since records began more than 40 years ago.
Formed over the past 20,000 years, Indonesia's peat bogs are up to 20 metres deep. Huge areas have been drained for agricultural projects in recent years. This leaves the peat dry and prone to fires spread when farmers clear the forest, especially when the rains fail in El Niņo years.
