Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) warns of the impact of climate change, which is currently a topic that has adorned media reports and conversations on various social media platforms this year.
Moreover, this year extreme weather and climate phenomena hit countries in various parts of the world. Starting from rain accompanied by flash floods, drought and extreme heat, tornadoes, increasingly worsening air pollution, to increasingly rapid climate and weather cycles.
Worst Case Scenario
Head of BMKG Dwikorita Karnawati revealed the worst scenario that is currently threatening the world, including Indonesia. Namely, a food crisis, which could then trigger an economic and political crisis.
The worst-case scenario, he said, is the domino effect of climate change.
“Climate change that is occurring in the world, he added, has a serious impact on the economy of all countries, including Indonesia. If it continues, as predicted by the world food and agriculture organization, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the threat of famine lurking around the world could occur in 2050,” he said in a statement on the official website in November 2023.
The scary thing, continued Dwikorita, is that this disaster will not matter whether it is a developed country or a developing country. Therefore, Dwikorita appealed to all countries, including Indonesia, to change lifestyles that rely on fossil energy to become environmentally friendly energy.
“If this culture is not changed, then the prediction that in the middle of this century the world will experience food security problems will actually happen. For ASEAN – as well as Indonesia, it can be categorized as an area vulnerable to food security and falls into a level beyond moderate,” he said. .
“The worst indication is that if a food crisis occurs, it is certain that there will be an economic and political crisis in the country. This is a fact that must be understood by all Indonesian people,” said Dwikorita.
The Signs Appear
BMKG has actually repeatedly warned of the threat posed by climate change that stalks the earth.
Dwikorita explained that one of the impacts of climate change is disruption of food security triggered by extreme drought and water shortages or water hotspots that occur globally. And it is predicted that this will continue for some time to come.
He explained that the food security pressure indicator based on water hotspots shows that by the middle of the century, around the 2050s, most areas on earth will be orange to dark orange, even black.
“As a result of this water shortage, projected by the world meteorological organization, including in Indonesia, the color is orange, there will be a condition of quite high vulnerability to food security,” said Dwikorita during a working meeting with Commission V DPR, Wednesday (8/10/2023).
“It is predicted that in the 2050s there will be food shortages due to water shortages, in orange, brown, red and dark areas. Indonesia is in the middle (orange) region category,” he said.
Hottest Year
He also quoted data from the world meteorological agency, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which recorded that 2023 would be a year full of record temperatures.
“This condition has never happened before, where heatwaves occur in many places simultaneously. June to August are the three hottest months in history and July 2023 is the hottest month. This makes 2023 likely to be the hottest year in history climate records, beating 2016 and 2022,” he explained.
“This situation is the impact of climate change which also puts additional pressure on already scarce water resources and produces what is known as a water hotspot. And increases the vulnerability of world food stocks,” he explained.
Dwikorita warned that all parties should work together and work together to carry out mitigation actions. Starting from saving electricity, water, waste management, reducing fossil energy and replacing it with electric vehicles, reducing the use of single-use plastic, planting trees, as well as mangrove restoration.
“Implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies must be intensified in all regions of Indonesia without exception. Moreover, surface air temperatures in Indonesia are projected to continue to rise in the future,” said Dwikorita.
Indonesia's Gold is Threatened
On the other hand, he added, the government is currently preparing a Presidential Instruction (Inpres) for Indonesian policy so that Indonesia's long-term development plans are correlated with climate and disaster resilience policies.
Apart from that, he added, BMKG encourages economists and engineers who design infrastructure to refer to numerical modeling to validate it with climate developments and their impacts. Which is based on observation results, satellite data and observations in the field.
“Because even for us, climate experts, this trend is unpredictable. Very sharp, unpredictable. So please take that into account,” he stressed.
Dwikorita said that global climate phenomena are currently becoming more complex, more uncertain and more complicated, which has an impact on regional and local climate conditions in Indonesia.
He explained that the results of climate observations of average temperatures from 1850-2023 showed that temperatures in 1850-1900 were still relatively stable.
“However, once industry existed, gradually, around 1950, there was an increase in global temperatures. In fact, a spike occurred towards 1980. Where the temperature increase graph can be seen in the period 1920-1950, it was still sloping, then became steeper after 1980, he said.
“And the recorded increase in temperature until 2023 has reached approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to before the industrial revolution, or the period 1850-1900. And, in the last 8 years, from 2016 to 2023, the hottest record in history has been recorded,” said Dwikorita.
One of them, said Dwikorita, was that the temperature in July 2023 was recorded as the hottest temperature compared to non-July temperatures in previous years. In addition, in 2023, the hottest temperature recorded will repeatedly break records.
For example, in April 2023 the hottest temperature reached over 45.4 degrees Celsius in Tak, Thailand. Then in July 2023, the hottest maximum temperature reached 53 degrees Celsius in western America and temperatures of more than 43 degrees Celsius remained for 31 consecutive days.
Then in August 2023, during winter in Bolivia, the temperature actually reached 45 degrees Celsius.
“So this temperature increase is indeed global, although thank God, Indonesia, although there has been an increase, is not as big as others because Indonesia's sea area is much wider than its land area, which acts as a cooler,” he concluded.
[Gambas:Video CNBC]
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