The eastern and western portions of Indonesia’s most densely populated island, Java, as well as the coastal regions of Sumatra, parts of western and northern Sulawesi, and southeastern Papua islands are all highly vulnerable to multiple climate hazards, including drought, floods, landslides, and sea level rise—but not cyclones. A global risk analysis conducted by the World Bank ranks Indonesia as 12th out of 35 countries facing a relatively high mortality risk from multiple hazards. According to a recent vulnerability mapping exercise conducted for South East Asia, western and eastern parts of the island of Java are considered hotspots for the impacts of multiple hazards. These hazards are either geological or hydro-meteorological in nature and include earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, floods, landslides, droughts, and forest fires. An estimated 40% of the country’s inhabitants are at risk.
This section provides a summary of key natural hazards and their associated socioeconomic impacts in a given country. And it allows quick evaluation of most vulnerable areas through the spatial comparison of natural hazard data with development data, thereby identifying exposed livelihoods and natural systems.
The charts provide overview of the most frequent natural disaster in a given country and understand the impacts of those disasters on human populations.
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Climate change is now recognized to have a significant impact on disaster management efforts and pose a significant threat to the efforts to meet the growing needs of the most vulnerable populations. The demands of disaster risk management are such that concise, clear, and reliable information is crucial. The information presented here offers insight into the frequency, impact and occurrence of natural hazards. Source (PDF)
Understanding natural hazard occurrence as well as historical climate conditions, in relation to development contexts, is critical to understanding a country’s historical vulnerability. This tool allows the visualization of different natural hazards or historical climate conditions with socio-economic and development datasets. Select the Development Context and either a Natural Hazard or Climate Condition and overlay horizontally by sliding the toggle left or right to gain a broader sense of historically vulnerable areas.
Data presented under Historical Climate Conditions are reanalysis products derived from ERA5-Land data. ERA5-Land is a global land-surface dataset at 9 km resolution, consistent with atmospheric data from the ERA5 reanalysis from 1950 onward. Climate reanalyses combine past observations with models to generate consistent time series of multiple climate variables. They provide a comprehensive description of the observed climate as it has evolved during recent decades, on 3D grids at sub-daily intervals.
This data has been collected, aggregated and processed by the Climate Resilience Cluster of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD) initiative.
- Floods have posed the greatest threat to Indonesians in major urban centers, including Jakarta, Medan, and Bandung, home to more than 13 million, two million, and four million people, respectively. For example, the damages from the 2007 flood in Jakarta amounted to more than US$900 million, and rain-triggered landslides are common.
- Sea level rise threatens 42 million Indonesians who live less than 10 meters above sea level. A one meter rise in sea level could inundate 405,000 hectares of land and reduce Indonesia’s territory by flooding low-lying islands. A 50cm rise in sea level, combined with land subsidence in Jakarta Bay, could permanently inundate densely populated areas of Jakarta and Bekasi that house over 270,000.
- Indonesia suffers the effects of El Niño, which reduce average rainfall and water storage capacity while exposing large regions to drought and fire. In 1997, droughts related to El Niño adversely impacted 426,000 hectares of rice, yields of coffee, cocoa, and rubber also suffered; and it caused widespread water shortages and wildfires.
- Climate change threatens to exacerbate the hydro-meteorological risks such as recurring floods and drought; prolonged drought in turn is projected to worsen the impacts of forest fires.
- Climate change will also decrease food security as production patterns and outputs change due to shifts rainfall, evaporation, run-off water and soil moisture.
More information on natural hazards can be found at ThinkHazard.
- The eastern and western portions of Indonesia’s most densely populated island, Java, as well as the coastal regions of Sumatra, parts of western and northern Sulawesi, and southeastern Papua islands are all highly vulnerable to multiple climate hazards, including drought, floods, landslides, and sea-level rise—but not cyclones.
- According to a recent vulnerability mapping exercise conducted for South East Asia, western and eastern parts of the island of Java are considered hotspots for the impacts of multiple hazards . These hazards are either geological or hydro-meteorological in nature and include earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, floods, landslides, droughts, and forest fires. An estimated 40% of the country’s inhabitants are at risk.
- Climate change threatens to exacerbate the hydro-meteorological risks such as recurring floods and drought; prolonged drought in turn is projected to worsen the impacts of forest fires.
- Climate change will also decrease food security as production patterns and outputs change due to shifts rainfall, evaporation, run-off water and soil moisture. Restoring the damage caused by these natural disasters is having a growing strain on public expenditures. Consequently, financing that is diverted for reconstruction and recovery is diverted from important development interventions.