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.

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Indonesian environment minister concerned about dolphin show in Bali

Antara 27 Jul 15;

Photo document of dolphin kiss the audience at the show dolphins swimming around in a plastic tub. (ANTARA/Rivan Awal Lingga)
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesian Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya has expressed concern over the dolphin show organized in Bali, which is discussed worldwide and has been petitioned on change.org.

"Today, Minister Nurbaya commented on change.org to express her concern for four dolphins in Bali. The petition was created three weeks ago," Communications Director of Change.org Indonesia Desmarita Murni said here on Monday.

The petition was created by an Australian surfer, Craig Brokensha, with the title, "Free four wild dolphins contained in a tiny resort pool."

Till Monday, the petition had received more than 290 thousand signatures.

According to Murni, Brokensha protested the four captured dolphins being kept in a small, chlorinated pool in Keramas district, Bali.

In her comment, Nurbaya pointed out that she had noticed the petition. She also offered her gratitude for the publics concern for environmental conservation and animal rescue issues such as the case of the dolphins in Bali.

"I have been aware of this petition since it was created and have been following its updates," she remarked. "Thank you for voicing your concern through this petition. Your support and reports will help us conserve and protect the environment."

The minister further noted that the petition had been taken very seriously, and an investigation on the matter was underway.

"If the resort carries out any prohibited acts, regardless of whether it is violence or negligence towards the dolphins, we will take firm action," she emphasized.

In addition, Nurbaya admitted that the petition had promoted the dolphin show extensively, due to which a public discussion on the subject was needed with the involvement of numerous parties.

With regard to this idea, she added that in the next few weeks, the Environment Ministry will invite experts on conservation, animal protection, education, and psychology, as well as from non-governmental organizations, to a public discussion on the protection of dolphins.

"We will hold an open discussion to find a win-win solution," she said.

Reporting by Ricky Prayoga

(Uu.A060/INE)

EDITED BY INE

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Indonesia: Elephant relocated from housing complex

The Jakarta Post 27 Jul 15;

After a long and risky effort, the Riau Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) on Saturday evening managed to relocate a wild Sumatran elephant from a residential area in the provincial capital of Pekanbaru.

The male elephant, whose age was estimated to be between 16 and 20 years, was first seen loitering in areas near the Primadona residential complex in Tenayan Raya district on early Friday.

“The people were scared because the elephant did not want to leave,” local resident Sugianto said, as quoted by Antara news agency.

A group of BKSDA personnel later arrived at the area. They, however, found it difficult to calm and remove the elephant, as hundreds of residents swarmed the location to watch the operation.

On Friday evening, the team finally managed to put a chain on the elephant in a secondary forest near the residential area, which is also home to many brick makers.

The relocation effort continued the next day with help from two tame elephants — a 51-year-old male named Seng Arun and a 43-year-old female named Indah — from an elephant training center (PLG) based in the neighboring Siak regency.

Police and military personnel were also deployed to secure the relocation, which again attracted hundreds of curious residents.

The wild elephant initially refused to be led by Seng Arun and Indah onto a truck. It also made an attempt to fight back, forcing the agency officers to give it an additional tranquilizing shot.

At around 7 p.m., after two hours of trying, the officers finally managed to put the wild elephant onto the truck.

“I have to admit that this evacuation process is very difficult, mainly due to a large number of residents. The wild elephant, meanwhile, has become very sensitive due to stress. There was a potential for the elephant to go on a rampage because of the noise or lights,” BKSDA official Supartono said.

Supartono said the wild elephant would be temporarily kept at the Siak PLG before it was sent back to its natural habitat in the Giam Siak Kecil Wildlife Reserve in Siak.

“We will examine its health. We hope we can immediately release the elephant so it can return to its group,” he said.

On July 13, an elephant was also reportedly spotted roaming briefly around a neighborhood area in Pekanbaru’s Rumbai Pesisir district.

“There is a big possibility that this wild elephant is the same elephant that was earlier spotted in Rumbai Pesisir. Male teenage elephants, in nature, are loners. They can get disoriented after they are kicked out by their herds,” Supartono said.

Besides entering residential areas, many wild elephants have reportedly destroyed residents’ plantations. Observers have said the cases occurred because of the damage done to the animal’s original habitat because of illegal logging and forest conversion to oil palm plantations.

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Worldwide strengthening El Nino giveth and taketh away

SETH BORENSTEIN and FRANK BAJAK Associated Press Yahoo News 28 Jul 15;

WASHINGTON (AP) — In California, they're counting on it to end an historic drought; in Peru, they've already declared a pre-emptive emergency to prepare for devastating flooding. It's both an economic stimulus and a recession-maker. And it's likely to increase the price of coffee, chocolate and sugar.

It's El Nino — most likely, the largest in well over a decade, forecasters say. A lot more than mere weather, it affects lives and pocketbooks in different ways in different places.

Every few years, the winds shift and the water in the Pacific Ocean gets warmer than usual. That water sloshes back and forth around the equator in the Pacific, interacts with the winds above and then changes weather worldwide. This is El Nino. Droughts are triggered in places like Australia and India, but elsewhere, droughts are quenched and floods replace them. The Pacific gets more hurricanes; the Atlantic fewer. Winter gets milder and wetter in much of the United States. The world warms, goosing Earth's already rising thermometer from man-made climate change.

Peruvian sailors named the formation El Nino — the (Christ) Child — because it was most noticeable around Christmas. An El Nino means the Pacific Ocean off Peru's coast is warm, especially a huge patch 330 feet (100 meters) below the surface, and as it gets warmer and close to the surface, the weather "is just going to be a river falling from the sky," said biophysicist Michael Ferrari, director of climate services for agriculture at the Colorado firm aWhere Inc.

Around the world, crops fail in some places, thrive elsewhere. Commercial fishing shifts. More people die of flooding, fewer from freezing. Americans spend less on winter heating. The global economy shifts.

"El Nino is not the end of the world so you don't have to hide under the bed. The reality is that in the U.S. an El Nino can be a good thing," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.

This El Nino officially started in March and keeps getting stronger. If current trends continue, it should officially be termed a strong El Nino early in August, peak sometime near the end of year and peter out sometime next spring. Meteorologists say it looks like the biggest such event since the fierce El Nino of 1997-1998.

California mudslides notwithstanding, the U.S. economy benefited by nearly $22 billion from that El Nino, according to a 1999 study. That study found that 189 people were killed in the U.S, mainly from tornadoes linked to El Nino, but an estimated 850 lives were saved due to a milder winter.

A United Nations-backed study said that El Nino cost Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela nearly $11 billion. Flooding in Peru destroyed bridges, homes, hospitals and crops and left 354 dead and 112 missing, according to the Pan-American Health Organization. The mining industry in Peru and Chile was hammered as flooding hindered exports.

Though this year's El Nino is likely to be weaker than the 1997-1998 version, the economic impact may be greater because the world's interconnected economy has changed with more vulnerable supply chains, said risk and climate expert Ferrari.

Economic winners include the U.S., China, Mexico and Europe while India, Australia and Peru are among El Nino's biggest losers.

On average, a healthy El Nino can boost the U.S. economy by about 0.55 percent of Gross Domestic Product, which would translate more than $90 billion this year, an International Monetary Fund study calculated this spring. But it could also slice an entire percentage point off Indonesia's GDP.

Indonesia gets hit particularly hard because an expected El Nino drought affects the country's mining, power, cocoa, and coffee industries, said IMF study co-author Kamiar Mohaddes, an economist at the University of Cambridge in London.


Graphic shows economic impact of El Nino on GDP of 20 economies

The expected El Nino drought in parts of Australia has started and may trim as much as 1 percent off of the country's GDP, said Andrew Watkins, supervisor of climate prediction services at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Tony Barnston, lead El Nino forecaster at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, cautioned that while El Nino has predictable effects and this one is strong, what happens next is not exactly certain.

But Peruvians are worried. Abraham Levy, director of Ambiental Andina, which advises businesses on meteorology- and hydrology-related issues, believes this El Nino could lead Peru into recession. Important export crops such as mangos and asparagus that grow in coastal valleys are already being adversely affected by the unseasonably high temperatures, said Levy.

"The export mango crop has not yet flowered," he said. "And if we don't have flowers we don't have fruit."

And then there's the flooding. Peru declared a pre-emptive state of emergency this month for 14 of its 25 states, appropriating some $70 million to prepare. Hipolito Cruchaga, the civil defense director in Peru's northern region of Piura, said authorities are clearing river beds of debris, reinforcing river banks with rock and fortifying reservoir walls. Sandbags and rocks are also being piled on some river banks.

"If the sea stays this hot at the end of August I'm afraid we're doomed," he said.

Bajak reported from Lima, Peru.
Online: NOAA's El Nino page: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/enso.shtml

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Only 100 tigers left in Bangladesh's famed Sundarbans forest

The population in the mangrove forest is far less than believed, officials say, after a census uses cameras hidden in trees to record numbers
Agence France-Presse The Guardian 27 Jul 15;

Only around 100 tigers remain in Bangladesh’s famed Sundarbans forest, far fewer of the endangered animals than previously thought, according to a census.

Some 440 tigers were recorded during the previous census in 2004 in the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and one of the last remaining habitats for the big cats.

But experts said better methodology was the reason for the huge drop in the numbers, saying hidden cameras used this time around, rather than pugmarks, gave a much more accurate figure.

Tapan Kumar Dey, the government’s wildlife conservator, said analysis of camera footage from the year-long survey that ended in April found numbers ranged between 83 and 130, giving an average of 106.

“So plus or minus we have around 106 tigers in our parts of the Sundarbans. It’s a more accurate figure,” Dey told Agence France-Presse about the survey, which has not yet been publicly released.

About 74 tigers have previously been counted on the Indian side of the Sundarbans, which makes up nearly 40% of the forest straddling both countries over 10,000 sq km (3,860 sq m).

Bengal tigers live mainly in India, where nationwide there are 2,226, with smaller populations in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Myanmar.

Monirul Khan, a zoology professor at Bangladesh’s Jahangirnagar University and the nation’s foremost tiger expert, said the survey confirmed his worst fears.

“It seems the population has declined more than we had feared,” Khan said, saying his studies showed the figure was no more than 200.

Khan said the government needed to do more to protect the animals, whose numbers were shrinking because of poaching and rapid development on the edge of the forest.

The World Wildlife Fund says tigers worldwide are in serious danger of becoming extinct in the wild. Their numbers have fallen from 100,000 in 1900 to around 3,200 now.

Officials have conceded that the pugmark tracking system used in 2004 was unreliable and cameras were installed in trees throughout the forest for the latest survey.

YV Jhala, professor at the Wildlife Institute of India, told AFP the new figure was the “reality”.

“The 440 figure was a myth and an imagination. Bangladesh parts of the Sundarbans with its prey size can support up to 200 tigers,” he said, also urging authorities to act to better protect the cats.

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Best of our wild blogs: 27 Jul 15

22 August (Sat) morning: Free guided walk at Chek Jawa Boardwalk
Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs

Javan Mynas Anting With Millipedes
Bird Ecology Study Group

How effective are conservation policies?
Nature rambles

White-breasted Waterhen (Amaurornis phoenicurus) @ Kranji
Monday Morgue

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How to educate your children

A trip to the history museum opens new vistas for kids but is it all a little too much?
Clara Chow Straits Times 27 Jul 15;

Wake up on a Sunday, convinced you have to do something educational with your children. Trawl websites for ideas.

Decide to go to Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum. Buy tickets online and print them out while still wearing your pyjamas.

Drag children, groaning, out of the house. Drive to the museum. Find it because it looks like a giant lump of moss-covered clay. Beat a beat-up Mazda to a prime parking space. Whole family cheers.

Hang out at the eco-roof garden until your allotted time of entry. Wrestle with the museum's official app. Point out mangrove plants in the garden, the spores on the underside of fern leaves and fish fry in the ponds. Natter on.

Look up, and realise that the kids are squinting at their father's iPhone screen in the bright sunlight. Throw a fit.

Go back downstairs; go through the turnstiles. Feel a slight sense of urgency: Everything must be examined in less than two hours, before your time is up.

Battle other parents to lift the almost-six-year-old up to the eye pieces of microscopes to look at bacteria. Keep opening your mouth to pontificate about fungi and molluscs. Keep stopping in mid-sentence, when you realise your kids have run off. Look sheepishly at strangers.

Give up and, alone, examine the bank of creatures preserved in jars along a back-lit wall. Marvel at sea whips, daisy sponges, fat-armed jellyfish and a Reeve's turtle - long dead, and suspended in chemicals and time. Gawk and shudder a little at worm specimens.

Flit back and forth between display case and wall captions - a busy bee soaking up facts. You are taller than most of the kids crowding around but you feel eight again. You remember the excitement of school excursions, the thrill of looking at something other than textbooks.

Try and ignore the fact that your two sons are having pretend lightsabre fights and running in circles somewhere in the biodiversity gallery, their footsteps echoing. Pretend not to know them.

Go for micro over macro. Remain strangely unimpressed by the expensive dinosaur bones rising like cranes up to the ceiling in the centre of the room.

Systematically catalogue every tiny cowrie shell and beetle with your eyes. Imagine you are a camera. Thai zebra tarantula. Click. Crucifix swimming crab. Click. Carpenter bee. Click.

File away facts to use, either casually in conversation or in some literary short story you will one day write: Jewel beetles (Chrysochroa toulgoeti) are shiny and metallic-looking, not because of pigmentation but because of the way their exoskeletons reflect light.

One of your children comes to you and begs to go home.

Too late, you remember that he has a deep phobia of snakes, and an aversion to other reptiles and insects. This effectively rules out more than two-thirds of the exhibits at the museum.

You tell him you will steer him to the mammal section.

Tell him it is safe there. You put your hands over his eyes, and your husband takes one of his hands, his younger brother the other and, together, the entire family - like some strange new eight-legged and six-eyed insect - crawl slowly, excruciatingly, across the atrium, under the mirthless gaze of the dinosaurs.

Along the way, you try to get your children to stroke a panel of possum fur because it is soft like a dream. The elder son screams because he spots a scrap of bleached snake skin right next to the fur.

You realise that sand dollars are actual living things - not lost money on the beach, which is what you always pictured them as being when reading about them in books.

The clash between old ways and philosophies, and new identities and nationalities, intensifies after you climb the stairs to the Heritage Gallery. Singapore founder Sir Stamford Raffles' stuffed birds and monkeys sit quietly, a few cabinets down from a drawer containing a Singapore $1 bill featuring a photo of a black-naped tern taken by Datuk Loke Wan Tho, who built up Cathay Organisation.

The children press buttons in the sound booth. They have exhausted the possibilities of the dinosaur app.

Standing in front of showcases, you wonder about the Victorian obsession for pigeonholing dead creatures into curio cases that the museum's collection sprung from. You laugh inwardly at the arrogance of men, colonial masters, trying to fix their world, insisting on stasis, even as Nature refuses to be pinned down. You see the error of your ways, trying to herd your children's imagination through life, so they learn the way you do.

Meditating in front of the jars of pickled snakes, you overhear one young man telling a few others that the python coiled up over there has two penises, and one of them is showing.

"Why?" you blurt out, before you can stop yourself.

"Why what?" he asks, startled.

"What is the second one for?" you ask.

"I don't really know," he replies.

Months later, you will still be wondering about this. You will look it up on the Internet and find an explanation: Female snakes are able to control which male snake they mate with will fertilise their eggs, so having two penises helps the male increase their sperm count, maximising their chances of reproduction. You will realise you need to wait for the younger son to grow up before you have someone to tell it to.

But in the museum, you nod at the young men, who scurry away from you, embarrassed.

What you must do next is this: Gather your children. Tell them it's time to go home. Stop by the gift shop if necessary, and buy yourself a piece of petrified wood.

Drive away, and cheer again as a family when you realise that parking is free. Promise yourself to do this again.

That some of it will sink in.

Some day.

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Corals relocated away from Tuas Terminal development thriving, says MPA

Adrian Lim Straits Times 26 Jul 15;

SINGAPORE - A project to relocate coral colonies to protect them from the impact of the Tuas Terminal development has yielded positive results, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said on Saturday.

The corals were moved from the Sultan Shoal, southwest of Singapore, to three southern sites at St John's and Sisters' Islands, from September 2013 to August 2014.

About 80 per cent, or 2300 out of 2,800 coral colonies, were successfully moved, the MPA said. While the bigger corals were relocated to the three sites, over 1,200 small coral fragments were reared in coral nurseries set up at Lazarus Island and Kusu Island.

MPA said that 92 per cent have survived and grown in size of up to twice their original diameter. Around 420 coral fragments have also been transplanted and attached back to the substrate at Lazarus Island and Kusu Island.

Senior Minister of State for Finance and Transport Josephine Teo said: "Even as we start reclamation works at Tuas to grow our port capacity, we are committed to carry out the works in a responsible and sustainable manner. Therefore, before any works started on the Tuas Terminal, we conducted an environmental impact assessment study in 2012. We then took immediate steps to mitigate the impact."

She was speaking at an event held at Marina South Pier to recognise volunteers who helped in the project.

About 50 volunteers participated in diving activities to harvest coral colonies, attach the relocated corals to the suitable solid substrates, and set up coral nurseries underwater.

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Malaysia: ‘Stop the logging around Taman Negara’

ONG HAN SEAN The Star 27 Jul 15;

JERANTUT: An environmental group and tourism operators are calling for a stop to aggressive logging at Taman Negara’s borders.

Pertubuhan Pelindung Khazanah Alam Malaysia (Peka) president Puan Sri Shariffa Sabrina Syed Akil said the rivers flowing into Sungai Tembeling had been severely affected by logging in the Ulu Tembeling forests.

“And these had intensified in the last three years,” she said.

“The logging is causing more loss than profit,” Shariffa said. “Sungai Pengau and Sungai Lau have become dirty from erosion run-offs and the sediments are flowing into Sungai Tembeling, making it shallow,” she said after visiting the logging sites here yesterday.

Shariffa urged the state government to halt logging in the area, saying it did not looked sustainable.

Pahang National Park Tourism Operators Association chairman Abdul Jalil Rahman said although the logging was outside Taman Negara, the effects were turning tourists away.

“From the feedback I received from tourists, they already got a negative impression upon entering Taman Negara because they had seen so many trailers carrying logs.

“Although the logging is not within Taman Negara, it is damaging to the park’s image,” he said.

Abdul Jalil said tourists also complained of over-development.

“The tourists expected to see a pristine rainforest but they left disappointed, complaining that they did not even see any animals.

“In the past, some tourists would even cry when they left Taman Negara but these days, repeat visitors are rare,” he said.

Abdul Jalil added that road construction to several villages here would seem to be for the people’s benefit. “But from the looks of it, the road is being used for transporting logs instead.”

Tour guide Roslan Abu Kassim, 50, claimed that the massive flood in Taman Negara last year was caused by Sungai Tembeling becoming too shallow.

“I fear it will be even worse this year.”

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Indonesia: S. Kalimantan on highest alert for wildfires

Antara 25 Jul 15;

Banjarmasin (ANTARA News) - Authorities of South Kalimantan have declared the highest alert status for wildfires that have been proliferating due to extreme dry weather conditions over the past several weeks.

On Thursday (July 23), 19 hotspots were detected, with the number increasing every day, Head of the Forest and Plantation Fire Unit of the Natural Resources Conservation Office of South Kalimantan Zulkarnain said here on Saturday.

"Due to extreme weather conditions, South Kalimantan is now in the state of highest alert for wildfires," he added.

Personnel of forest fire units in the three districts of Tanah Bumbu, Tanah Laut, and Banjar are focusing on dousing the existing flames, Zulkarnain affirmed, adding that most of the existing fires in South Kalimantan are in peat lands.

Moreover, the Indonesian government is gearing up to face the effects of the predicted weak to moderate El Nino, which could reduce precipitation by 40 to 80 percent.

This natural phenomenon will affect the provinces of Sumatra, East Java, Bali, West and East Nusa Tenggara, and Papua in particular, from June to November this year.

In addition, hundreds of hotspots indicating wildfires were reported in some provinces of Sumatra Island, which is currently experiencing a dry spell, with temperatures soaring to 35 degrees Celsius.

Based on data from the NOAA-18 Satellite, as many as 1,470 hotspots were detected across Sumatra Island in the period between January 1 and June 16. Of the total, 621 were found in Riau province.
(Uu.F001/INE/KR-BSR/B003)

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Indonesia: Long dry season has affected West and Central Java

Ganug Nugroho Adi and Arya Dipa, thejakartapost.com 26 Jul 15;

Long dry season has affected 101 hectare rice fields in West Java and 30 villages in Wonogiri, Central Java.

Some 29,233 residents of 30 villages of Giritontro, Pracimantoro, Paranggupito, Manyaran, Eromoko, Nguntoronadi and Giriwoyo districts of southern Wonogiri have been struggling with water scarcity for the last two months, as the water levels of lakes, reservoirs and irrigation systems have subsided because of a lack of rainfall.

Wonogiri regent Danar Rahmanto said on Sunday that the regency actually manages seven reservoirs, but some of them have dried out.

"We will prioritize clean water distribution to areas hard hit by drought, [namely] Paranggupito, Pracimantoro, Eromoko, Manyaran, dan Giritontro," Danar said.

Separately, Wonogiri Regional Disaster Mitigation Agency executive Bambang Haryanto said that his agency had distributed 70 water tanks, with the capacity of 6,000 liters, to five districts gradually since early June.

Giritontro district head Joko Waluyo said that one family of five people needed about 50 liters of water per day. "Residents could only get some 20 liters during a water distribution schedule, which is not every day," he said. "Residents are thus forced to spend between Rp 70,000 [US$5.20] to Rp 150,000 for daily clean water."

Residents who could not afford the water were forced to dig deeper into dried reservoirs. "We need about half an hour of digging just to get 10 liters," said Daryati, 57, resident of Pucanganom of Giritontro district.

In West Java, 101,000 hectares of rice fields in 20 regencies and cities of Indramayu, Bogor, Subang, Cianjur and Bekasi were under threat of crop failure if no rainfall in the near future.

West Java Agriculture Agency head Diden Trisnadi said on Sunday that crop failure had occured in at least 121 hectares of rice fields in Subang and Cianjur.

"Irrigation could [usually] only save some 25 percent of dried rice paddies," said Diden.(+++)

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Investors could lose $4.2tn due to impact of climate change, report warns

Terry Macalister The Guardian 24 Jul 15;

Private investors stand to lose $4.2tn (£2.7tn) on the value of their holdings from the impact of climate change by 2100 even if global warming is held at plus 2C, a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has warned.

If firm action is not taken at the forthcoming climate change talks in Paris and the Earth’s temperature warms by a further 5C then investors are facing losses of almost $7tn at today’s prices, new research shows.

This is more than the total current market capitalisation of the London Stock Exchange with impacts on company holdings that will come not just through extreme weather damage but also through lower economic growth.

The report argued that financial regulators should properly recognise “systematic environmental risk”. It also called for a proper carbon price to be established as well as a tough new climate change treaty to be agreed in Paris.

The latest assessments of the rising risks posed to the global financial system lends enormous new weight to those who are already arguing that companies must be made to disclose their carbon emissions.

“Investors currently face a stark choice. Either they will experience impairments to their holdings in fossil fuel companies should robust regulatory action on climate change take place, or they will face substantial losses across the entire portfolio of manageable assets should little mitigation be forthcoming,” said Brian Gardner, the editor of an EIU report, entitled The cost of inaction: recognising the value at risk from climate change.

The $4.2tn figure is roughly the equivalent to the value of the world’s publicly listed oil and gas companies or the annual gross domestic product of Japan, the world’s third largest economy.

Nick Robins, co-director of the Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System at the UN Environment Programme said that financial markets are not treating the threat posed by climate change seriously enough. “We wouldn’t get on a plane if there was a 5% chance of the plane crashing,” he said. “But we’re treating the climate with that same level of risk in a very offhand, complacent way.”

The EIU concludes that there are widespread opportunities for investors to reduce their exposure to environmental risk – one way is to invest in projects that finance a transition to a lower carbon economy.

But it also believes that climate change is likely to represent “an obstacle” for many asset owners and managers to fulfil their fiduciary duties to act in the best interests of those who lend their cash to invest.

According to estimates by the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, only 7% of asset owners calculate the carbon footprint of their investment portfolios and only 1.4% have an explicit target to reduce it.

The EIU follows warnings from the Bank of England about the financial risks posed to fossil fuel companies if global climate action renders their reserves of oil, coal and gas worthless. On Thursday, a report from the London assembly warned that the city was particularly vulnerable to financial risks posed by climate change because its economy is particularly well-connected globally.

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