P

eople from all walks of life have suffered great miseries owing to climate change '€” a longer rainy season that triggered floods in some regions and lingering drought in other parts of the country, apart from crop failure.

Climate change is likely behind El Niño fluctuation in the Pacific region. Kim Cobb and other scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US indicated a strong link between climate change and El Niño in the Science journal two years ago.

'€œEl Niño may get stronger as the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere climbs,'€ Cobb said. Scientific data shows that the level of CO² concentration in our atmosphere has been soaring for the past 10 years to an unprecedented 400 parts per million.

As in previous years, this year we are on the verge of experiencing El Niño. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has predicted that 2015 will be the hottest year on record with a 50 to 60 percent chance of El Niño occurring. Throughout May '€” according to the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) and world meteorological institutes '€” the potential of El Niño has been visible in some Pacific regions. Australia has confirmed the El Niño phase is under way in its region, while it will be Indonesia'€™s turn from June to August.

El Niño has become a ubiquitous problem here. Rainfall will gradually decrease in most regions and a prolonged drought will lead to forest fires, particularly in Riau. Extreme weather and long drought cycles, peatland and land burning for agriculture as a custom of local people are among factors that accelerate the fires.

The Forestry and Environment Ministry, the National Disaster Management Board and regional governments in Riau and elsewhere have taken steps to mitigate the impacts of El Niño.

The short-term and immediate mitigation of installing preliminary advanced detectors for regular weather and regional climate reports should be fundamental for further action. In the same way, specific general forecasts using computer models can also be applied to figure out when the El Niño phenomenon will start to have an impact.

To prevent forest fires in Riau from spreading, insulating permanent canals have been designed to minimize the effects of El Niño, according to Arief Yuwono, deputy to environment minister for environmental degradation control and climate change.

Nevertheless, active coordination among relevant institutions is really needed, particularly in regions affected over the last decade.

Building public awareness by sending text messages about information related to the weather and helping farmers rearrange their cultivating time and plant suitable commodities during the El Niño period are among basic actions needed to minimize the El Niño impacts.

In the mid-term trajectories, under President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s Cabinet, indications of moving forward and minimizing the impact of environmental degradation regionally to contribute to global climate change are one of the big goals in his Nawacita agenda.

Through this target, ongoing efforts to reduce emissions by 26 percent by 2020, as announced by his predecessor, are likely be implemented on target. More than that, for the upcoming international events '€” global climate change conference (COP-21) In Paris '€” it will be a key in elaborating Indonesia'€™s commitments and accomplishments so far to the global community.

In addition, the continuity of the forest moratorium was one of the propelling actions indicated by the President through the Forest and Environment Ministry. As we know, most environmental and global change issues and related plans have resulted in unsynchronized management and environmentally unfriendly patterns of forest harvesting. Not surprisingly, Indonesia is the world'€™s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Further, the policy of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus (REDD+) seems to be an ideal solution for maintaining the targeted forest area and preserving the ecosystem and region. Despite technical problems in several areas, it remains the best alternative for superintending the forest ecosystem and managing global climate change.

Along with others, Indonesia could be in the forefront in transforming a better global environment and mitigating any related catastrophic issue. A unified step in moving forward is needed to overcome this huge challenge.

The writer is a forestry graduate student at Michigan State University, sponsored by USAID PRESTASI. He was a 2013 fellow at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the UK, and lectures at the School of Forestry, Papua State University (UNIPA).