Climate Tracker Weekly: From Jakarta, Indonesia
Hi
Apa khabar?
Welcome to Climate Tracker’s weekly News...letter.
Each week we’ll ask one guest writer from our network to give you a short selection of some of the best climate news from their region, giving you a little window into some climate stories you probably didn’t see in your news feed.
This week, we have former Jakarta Globe reporter and Tumblr fan Nariswari Yudianti, with the biggest news out of Indonesia.
Apa khabar,
Welcome to my home in Jakarta, Indonesia!
It’s fasting time, and it’s been a very unusual Ramadhan as most of Indonesia’s cities are entering their 6th week of Large-Scale Social Restriction rules. With no mosques open, and no food markets, it makes for a very strange time for the world’s largest Muslim population.
This week, President ‘Joko’ Widodo highlighted that Indonesia could be headed for a critical food shortage. Several provinces are currently facing shortages of rice and key staples due to the combination of the virus outbreak and an unusually dry dry season.
This sparked an internal fight with the Agriculture Minister who claimed instead that there was plenty of food, it’s just not being equitably distributed across Indonesia’s. Currently, 20 out of 27 regions in Indonesia are at ‘shortage levels’ and 7 are at ‘deficit level’ (which is worse). In my own neighbourhood in Central Jakarta, chicken, eggs and sugar have all been super hard to find since March.
On the bright side, I was genuinely inspired when I came across Juli Nursandi’s story about cultivation in a bucket in Lampung, a province on the southern tip of Sumatra Island.
Juli is a lecturer in Aquaculture, and his idea to grow low-oxygen-resistant fish and vegetables in buckets at home went viral on Indonesian Twitter through the hashtag #BUDIKDAMBER (an abbreviation in Bahasa Indonesia for ‘cultivation in a bucket’). With the current food shortages, the idea has also started a national discussion about how home food farms could supplement food security concerns long term.
Finally, Indonesia is just now beginning to talk about what happens after COVID-19, through a national debate among energy experts about a green recovery strategy.
This comes after the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) received a proposal from Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), to expand our current solar capacity from 152 megawatts to 804.9 megawatts by 2024.
Considering Indonesia’s current plan aims to increase its renewable energy mix from 8 to 23 percent by 2025, a solar recovery strategy might be just what the country needs post-COVID-19.
Stay safe and healthy, everyone! And May the 4th be with you ;)
(yes I know it’s the 8th already)
From Climate Tracker
Are you failing through your home e-learning goals? Mai Hoang looked into the massive environmental inequalities between High School and University students around the world that COVID has revealed.
Sick of Humans of the Planet news? It’s not only got 7 million views, but we’ve counted 120 different reviews online, and many are not good. So instead of adding one more, we made this list of 7 Inspiring Environmental documentaries to watch instead.
For a multilateral perspective, Manka Behl interviewed the head of the Commonwealth this week on how this sparse collective has stayed united on climate (well, except for Australia).
What else we’re reading
Last week, the IEA came out with an estimate of an 8% drop in GHG emissions this year from COVID-19. This week we’re reading why the team at Carbon Brief’s think we’re still going to add 2.48 parts per million of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Brazil is getting hit hard by COVID-19. More than 180 Indigenous tribes have been infected so far, and leaders have called for international support to raise $3million to support forest defenders. This is in the wake of Anglo American planning to expand mining across the Amazon.
Up Next Week
In the next 2 weeks we’ll stay in Asia. Next week, we’ll have Lakshmi Sivadas with all the updates across India, and then we’ll cross to Papua New Guinea to hear about how the Pacific is dealing with the aftermath of cyclone Harold.
Image of the week
Quarantine facilities in Duong, Vietnam, where recent arrivals to the country are placed for 18 days in the sweltering heat, highlighting environmental inequalities. Photo: Son Hoang Pham
This is a Weekly newsletter created by Climate Tracker. If you have any questions, comments or want to get involved, email Chris at chris@climatetracker.org - that’s me. I’d love to hear from you...and don’t worry, I’m locked inside too.
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