CHANGE OF CLIMATE

**Admin** Thu Nov 06 2008, 23:35

Climate change may wipe some Indonesian islands off map

By Sugita Katyal and
Adhityani Arga | Posted Mon Dec 3, 2007 12:11am PST

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Many of Indonesia's islands may be
swallowed up by the sea if world leaders fail to find a way to halt rising sea
levels at this week's climate change conference
on the resort island of Bali.

Doomsters take this dire warning by
Indonesian scientists a step further and predict that by 2035, the Indonesian
capital's airport will be flooded by sea water and rendered useless; and by
2080, the tide will be lapping at the steps of Jakarta's
imposing Dutch-era Presidential palace which sits 10 km inland (about 6 miles).

The Bali
conference is aimed at finding a successor to the Kyoto
Protocol, which expires in 2012, on cutting climate warming carbon
emissions. With over 17,000 islands, many at risk of being washed away,
Indonesians are anxious to see an agreement reached and quickly implemented
that will keep rising seas at bay.

Just last week, tides burst through sea
walls, cutting a key road to Jakarta's
international airport until officials were able to reinforce coastal
barricades.

"Island
states are very vulnerable to sea level rise and
very vulnerable to storms. Indonesia
... is particularly vulnerable," Nicholas Stern, author of an acclaimed
report on climate change, said on a visit to Jakarta earlier this year.

Even large islands are at risk as global
warming might shrink their land mass, forcing coastal communities out of their
homes and depriving millions of a livelihood.

The island worst hit would be Java, which
accounts for more than half of Indonesia's
226 million people. Here rising sea levels would swamp three of the island's
biggest cities near the coast -- Jakarta, Surabaya and Semarang -- destroying
industrial plants and infrastructure.

"Tens of millions of people would have
to move out of their homes. There is no way this will happen without
conflict," Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar
said recently.

"The cost would be very high. Imagine,
it's not just about building better infrastructure, but we'd have to relocate
people and change the way people live," added Witoelar, who has said that
Indonesia could lose 2,000 of its islands by 2030 if sea levels continue to
rise.

CRUNCH TIME AT BALI

Environmentalists say this week's climate
change meeting in Bali
will be crunch time for threatened coastlines and islands as delegates from nearly 190 countries meet to hammer out a new
treaty on global warming.

Several small island nations including
Singapore,
Fiji,
Kiribati,
Tuvalu and Caribbean
countries have raised the alarm over rising sea levels which could wipe them
off the map.

The Maldives,
a cluster of 1,200 islands renowned for its luxury resorts, has asked the
international community to address climate change
so it does not sink into a watery grave.

According to a U.N. climate report,
temperatures are likely to rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius (2.0 and
11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) and sea levels by between 18 cm and 59 cm (seven and
23 inches) this century.

Under current greenhouse gas
emission levels, Indonesia
could lose about 400,000 sq km of land mass by 2080, including about 10 percent
of Papua, and 5 percent of both Java and Sumatra on the northern coastlines, Armi Susandi, a meteorologist at the Bandung
Institute of Technology, told Reuters.

Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country, has
faced intense pressure over agricultural land for decades.

Susandi, who has researched the impact of
climate change on Indonesia,
estimated sea levels would rise by an average of 0.5 cm a year until 2080,
while the submersion rate in Jakarta, which lies just above
sea level, would be higher at 0.87 cm a year.

A study by the UK-based International
Institute for Economy and Development (IIED) said at
least 8 out of 92 of the outermost small islands that make up the country's
borders are vulnerable.

TOO MANY ISLANDS
TO COUNT

Less than half of Indonesia's islands are inhabited
and many are not even named. Now, the authorities are hastily counting the
coral-fringed islands that span a distance of 5,000 km, the equivalent of going
from Ireland
to Iran,
before it is too late.

Disappearing islands and coastlines would
not only change the Indonesian map, but could also restrict access to mineral
resources situated in the most vulnerable spots, Susandi said.

He estimates that land loss alone would
cost Indonesia
5 percent of its GDP without taking into account the loss of property and
livelihood as millions migrate from low-lying coastlines to cities and towns on
higher ground.

There are 42 million people in Indonesia
living in areas less than 10 meters above the average sea level, who could be
acutely affected by rising sea levels, the IIED study showed.

A
separate study by the United Nations Environment Programme in 1992
showed in two districts in Java alone, rising waters could deprive
more than 81,000 farmers of their rice fields or prawn and fish ponds, while
43,000 farm laborers would lose their job.

One solution is to cover Indonesia's fragile beaches with
mangroves, the first line of defense against sea level
rise, which can break big waves and hold back soil and silt that damage
coral reefs.

A more expensive alternative is to erect
multiple concrete walls on the coastlines, as the United States has done to break the
tropical storms that hit its coast, Susandi said.

Some areas, including the northern shores
of Jakarta, are
already fitted with concrete sea barriers, but they are often damaged or too
low to block rising waters and big waves such as the ones that hit Jakarta in November.

"It will be like permanent
flooding," Susandi said. "By 2050, about 24 percent of Jakarta will disappear," possibly even forcing the
capital to move to Bandung,
a hill city 180 km east of Jakarta.