Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Tanjung Priok resident Edy Supriadi is adamant that the repeated flooding in his neighborhood is the work of an unfriendly Mother Nature, and nothing else.
He's so used to the water level rising that he has built a fort around his house to protect it.
""It's a common solution here,"" said Edy, who has lived in the area for around 40 years, on Thursday.
But the floods have nothing to do with rising world temperatures, he maintains.
""As far as I know, global warming is causing arctic ice melt and has no relation to the flooding here,"" he said.
He said he had only heard about global warming on the television and in the newspapers.
""No government officials have visited my area to tell me about the impacts of global warming.""
Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta, along with Cilincing, Koja, Pademangan and Penjaringan, is part of the 40 percent of Jakarta that is at or below sea level.
The State Minister for the Environment has warned that these parts of the city could be underwater by 2050 due to rising sea levels caused by global warming.
It made the prediction based on reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In its first report, the IPCC predicted sea level increases of between 18 cm and 58 cm by 2100, and temperature rises of between 0.2 degrees and 1 degree Celsius per year.
The changes will wipe out species, wreak economic havoc and trigger more droughts and floods.
The IPCC's second report on impact, adaptation and vulnerability said that by 2050 an extra 130 million people across Asia would be at risk of hunger because of climate change.
Its third report, on the mitigation of climate change, outlined the steps to be taken to avert the catastrophic results of climate change.
The report, a summary of a collective study by 2,000 scientists, said for the first time that lifestyle changes could help fight global warming.
It said that the world had to make essential cuts in the emission of greenhouse gasses through increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and vehicles, shifting from fossil fuels to renewable fuels, and reforming both the forestry and farming sectors.
Commenting on the three reports, the Jakarta administration said it was yet to make any moves to combat the effects of global warming.
""So far, there has been no official meeting to discuss the issue. We can't take action due to the limited budget,"" said Daniel Abbas, deputy chairman of the city's team dealing climate change.
Jakarta is the first city in the country to set up a team to study climate change.
Senior researcher at the Center for International Forestry Research Daniel Murdiyarso said that understanding of climate change was still very poor across Indonesia.
""It is very sad, not only the public, but many of the state officials do not know what climate change is,"" he told reporters during a recent discussion hosted by WWF Indonesia.
Indonesia, currently the world's third largest greenhouse gas emitting country after the United States and China, will host a climate change conference in December in Bali.
Some 10,000 experts and participants from 190 countries are expected to attend the conference.
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