Indonesia: Prolonged drought hits areas in Java, Sumatra

Arya Dipa and Ganug Nugroho Adi, The Jakarta Post 27 Jul 15;

Prolonged drought has caused a number of regions on Java to suffer from water scarcity and has increased hot spots on Sumatra.

In West Java, drought has threatened 101,000 hectares of rice fields. The head of the provincial Agriculture and Crop Agency, Diden Trisnadi, said that 49,000 hectares of fields had already dried out, although the plants still looked green.

“If rain doesn’t fall within the next week [the plants] will eventually also dry out,” Diden said over the weekend.

Drought has also caused harvest failure in at least 121 hectares of rice fields in Subang and Cianjur. Unless something is done for the dried fields, the regions would suffer from losing the production of 35,537 tons of unhusked rice.

Diden said drought was threatening 20 regencies and cities across the province, with the most suffering areas being 5,041 hectares in Indramayu, followed by Bogor (1,000 hectares), Subang (584), Cianjur (573) and Bekasi (475).

According to Diden, only some 25 percent of the affected rice fields could possibly be saved. The situation, he added, was similar to what happened in 2012 when the province could only produce 11.2 million tons of unhusked rice, a decrease from 11.63 million tons the previous year.

The problem was, Diden said, the areas suffering from drought this year are twice as large compared to those of 2012.

Erma Yulihastin of the climate variability team of the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space’s (Lapan) atmosphere technology and science center predicted that the drought would last until the end of this year.

“El Niño will continue strengthening until December 2015. Mitigation on the prolonged drought is needed,” she said, adding that mitigation could be done by, among other things, conserving water use for daily needs.

She also warned that prolonged drought could cause a significant drop in agricultural harvest yields, which later might influence the national food stocks.

“We recommend that no new planting is conducted at this point of time.”

In Wonogiri, Central Java, drought has caused 29,233 residents of 30 subdistricts in seven districts in the regency to suffer from clean water scarcity for the last two months as springs and other water resources, including dams, are drying up.

The 30 subdistricts are located in the southern parts of Wonogiri in the districts of Giritontro, Pracimantoro, Paranggupito, Manyaran, Eromoko, Giriwoyo and Nguntoronadi.

Wonogiri Regent Danar Rahmanto said the regions had indeed been recurrently hit by drought. “We will prioritize on clean water aids, especially to regions that have been completely dried such as the Paranggupito, Pracimantoro, Eromoko, Manyaran and Giritontro districts,” Danar said, Sunday.

Meanwhile in Riau, more than 100 hotspots are reported to have appeared in the province by the last week of July.

Data obtained by the Pekanbaru station of the Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) from the Terra and Aqua satellites showed that 122 hotspots were detected in 10 regencies and cities across Riau.

The most number of hotspots, 44, were detected in the Pelalawan regency, followed by 17 in Bengkalis, 16 in Kampar, 14 in Indragiri Hulu, eight in Indragiri Hilir, seven in Dumai, five each in Rokan Hilir and Siak, four in Kuantan Singingi and two in Rokan Hulu.

“Of the hot spots, 71 were identified as fire spots with a reliability level of over 70 percent, indicating that there were already forest and land fires,” BMKG Pekanbaru head Sugarin said.

Sugarin said that the hot spots in Riau were the highest in number across Sumatra Island where a total of 308 hot spots had been detected. Hot spots were also detected in South Sumatra (59), Jambi (58), North Sumatra (25), West Sumatra (19), Bangka Belitung (9), Lampung (5) and Riau Islands (10).

Rizal Harahap also con-tributed to the article from Pekanbaru.