Marguerite Afra, thejakartapost.com 28 Oct 15;
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia advises Indonesian government to amend the national regulations to focus more on the prevention than the mitigation of disasters.
“Preventive regulations are of great importance, because in cases like forest fires, mitigation would be harder once fires have spread,” WWF CEO Efransjah told thejakartapost.com in an event on Wednesday.
As a nature conservancy organization, which also focuses on protecting animals, WWF is concerned with how forest fires have spread into national parks, including Tanjung Puting National Park that includes some of the last remaining habitat for orangutans.
According to Efransjah, if forest fires kept spreading, sooner or later more orangutans would become victims. The haze disaster would probably deliver worse impacts for animals than for humans.
However, WWF could not fully focus on helping animals affected by haze right now as the organization's main concern today focused on evacuating WWF field staffs who are trapped in the haze-affected regions.
“There are more than 50 staffs dispersed in three provinces in Kalimantan. Some have evacuated from Palangkarya to Banjarmasin. We could not send them here due to thick haze,” said Efransjah, adding that some staffs have suffered from acute respiratory infections.
In addition, Efransjah said that after everything had been settled, WWF would conduct a comprehensive study regarding the impact of haze on animals in Indonesia. (dan)
Indonesia urged to invest more in disaster research
Hans Nicholas Jong, The Jakarta Post 28 Oct 15;
Indonesia has been urged to invest more in disaster research as the archipelago is among the most disaster-prone countries in the Asia Pacific region, which is the most vulnerable region in the world.
Surono, a disaster expert at the Energy and Natural Resources Ministry, said disaster research in Indonesia was extremely limited.
“In order to identify problems, we need research. But in Indonesia, there is a severe lack of research on disasters, compared to training for people removing the bodies of disaster victims. So the government’s approach [to disasters] is very much reactive, not preventive,” he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
According to Surono, the field of disaster research lacked much-needed funding, which in turn discouraged students from looking for jobs in the field.
“No one is interested in studying the subject because there are no career prospects. Just imagine, Indonesia, which is very prone to earthquakes, has failed to become a center of excellence on disaster research, unlike Japan or Europe. Why is there no university major on disasters in Indonesia? Because no one’s interested. If you are a graduate of disaster studies here, where do you want to work?” he said.
Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations in the world. “From 2000 to 2011, there were 12 earthquakes in the world with more than 1,000 fatalities. Four of those were in Indonesia. The first one was in Aceh in 2004, then in Nias in 2005, Yogyakarta in 2006 and in Padang in 2009,” Surono said.
“But because there’s not enough research, we were caught by surprise. Indonesians are often surprised when a volcano erupts in the country even though Indonesia has the largest number of volcanoes in the world,” he added.
Between 2006 and 2012, Indonesia increased investment in disaster-risk reduction from about 0.4 percent of the state budget to 0.7 percent.
“Generally, however, investment in disaster management is inadequate and is mostly spent on response and recovery. There has been progress in building institutional capacities for early warning, preparedness and response, but there are still significant gaps,” the latest report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) on disasters said.
The 2015 Asia-Pacific Disaster Report titled “Disasters without borders: regional resilience for sustainable development”, which was launched on Tuesday, analyses the value of multi-hazard early-warning systems and maps out the way to provide the right information to the right people at the right time.
“A fundamental rethink is needed as many governments still follow a short-sighted approach to disasters — with the focus on response, and paying less attention to adaptation, mitigation and preparedness,” said Shamshad Akhtar, UN under-secretary-general and executive secretary of ESCAP.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the agency had in fact allocated 80 percent of its annual budget of Rp 1.2 trillion (US$88 million) for disaster adaptation, mitigation and preparedness.
“The money was spent on educating people, increasing the capacity of local disaster mitigation agencies etc,” he told the Post on Tuesday, adding that the government had allocated a larger budget for disaster mitigation since 2010.
However, Sutopo acknowledged that disaster research in Indonesia was still lacking. “Most of the research is very basic,” he said. “Meanwhile, research is very important because the law on disaster mitigation says disaster management has to be based on science and technology.”
According to Sutopo, the BNPB actually has a budget of Rp 20 billion for research. However, since the agency is not a research institution, the BNPB can only disburse the budget to other government agencies, such as the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), to help them with disaster-related research.
