One of the important tasks of the Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Program – or abbreviated as APIK – is to help BMKG in strengthening Weather and Climate Information Services, so that it can be fully utilized by the Indonesian people in general, as well as communities in East Java, Southeast Sulawesi and Maluku in particular. We believe that the improvement of weather and climate information services, is one of the most important components in increasing the resilience of communities in facing the threat of climate change. The resilience needs to be built at the level of institutional resilience, socio-economic resilience and landscape-based resilience, and to be built at the National Government level, Local Government, private sector, and Community level resilience.
In the next four years, we are committed together with BMKG and other APIK Partners both at national level and in the region, to improve the resilience of the community in the face of the threat of climate change and hydro-meteorological disasters. Through the assessment study we conducted in 2016, we summarized the conditions of services and weather and climate information needs at the national level as well as in our work area.
In Maluku Province, farmers were devastated by the drought during El-Nino in 2015 which caused massive clove and nutmeg trees to fail. Marine Extreme weather also disrupts the activities of small fishermen and inter-island transportation service actors, due to high waves that reduce their fishing schedule. Early warning and periodic weather and climate information are very crucial in their daily activities.
As a result of the increase in extreme weather, farmers in East Java are increasingly haunted by the danger of flooding, which at any time can hit their rice fields. Farmers in Sidoarjo are hampered by their activities when tidal waves enter their ponds. Sugarcane Farmers in Malang Regency, complained about the decline in the quality of sugar cane baths due to excessive rainfall, and the hampered distribution of their commodity products during extreme rain conditions.
The Bungin Permai village community, Konawe Selatan, Southeast Sulawesi, complained about the decline in their seaweed production due to disease. They need information on currents, waves and other maritime weather, to improve their seaweed farming activity. The level of safety at ocean is sometimes underestimated by fishermen on Kendari and Konawe Sealatan, due to their increasingly uncertain fishing time and the limitations of other livelihood options.
From the assessment, we study that the process of disseminating weather and climate information is still not optimal. Especially for the community in rural and coastal areas. BMKG’s product range is still not optimally socialized to the public. On the other hand, there are still many small people who have not used smartphone technology, do not familiar with the internet, or even didn’t exposed by cellphones signal. The limitations of modes are a challenge in the process of disseminating information.
For urban communities living along the watershed, the threat of floods and landslides haunts them when the rainy season arrives. The increase in extreme rain, poor quality of urban drainage, and the destruction of conservation areas in the upstream region, require them to continue to monitor weather information consistently.
In some regions, weather and climate information modes are still dominated by television and radio media. The rest rely on information from farmer extension or local government staff, and exchange of information between their own communities. There are still many people in remote areas who have not used official information from BMKG, but only rely on traditional ways to predict weather conditions. Unfortunately, due to climate change, these traditional ways are increasingly becoming irrelevant.
From several resource person at the level of the ministries and institutions that we interviewed, in general they were quite satisfied with the quality of the information released by BMKG.
However, the process of exchanging information at the Ministry and Institution level has not fully run optimally. We also note that there are a number of things that need to be improved, including the lack of user manual guide and inter-operability issues. On the other hand, there are some staff at the ministerial level who have not been informed about new products that have been issued by BMKG.
Interoperability itself is defined as the ability of a system that automatically exchanges and uses information. In today’s digital era, information exchange is no longer only done by correspondence. Information Technology makes the process of exchanging information very fast. This requires that the products produced can also provide real-time, spatial based and more accurate information.
Currently the Ministries and Institutions are also required to make collaborative products. These products not only belong to one institution, but products that result from collaboration between institutions.
For example, BNPB cannot make a risk analysis of hydrometeorological disasters, without the support of credible weather and climate information from BMKG. KLHK crucially need the climate change projection information from BMKG to conduct the climate change vulnerability assessment. The Ministry of Health needs information on projections of future rainfall increases, to be able to analyze the dengue mosquito vector.
From the operational side, Ministries and Institutions are required to issue products that are more fast, high resolution and real-time. For long-term research needs, the climatological database becomes the main foundation of each derivative analysis produced in various sectors.
Indonesia’s vast territory is certainly a challenge for BMKG, in providing maximum weather and climate information services for entire Indonesian population. One of the results of our assessment also shows that BMKG continues to improve the quality of data collection, both by increasing the number of stations, improving station quality, increasing human resources, and strengthening the quality of instrumentation. In the end, good data can improve product quality and lead to improved service to the community.
USAID-APIK hope that our program can be an alternative communication medium in order to:
- improve coordination between Ministries and Institutions;
- become the venue for the dissemination of the latest BMKG products;
- and improve weather and climate information services at all level.
We believe that the responsibility for disseminating weather and climate information is not solely the responsibility of BMKG. Ministries and agencies at the national level, local governments, private sector and the media, have a very important role in disseminating weather and climate information.
Climate Resilience departs from the resilience of the community in fulfilling their basic needs. Climate Resilience is manifested in the form of community resilience in responding to and facing disasters. One characteristic of a community that is resilient to climate change is that people are aware, use, and respond to weather and climate information.