Budi Santoso Wignyosukarto, a hydraulic engineering expert at Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University, said that Indonesia had been accustomed to heavy rain, however, climate change would cause the weather to become less predictable, which would also affect dams.

Budi emphasized the need for Indonesia to be prepared for these uncertainties, as the country is already facing challenges such as rapid population growth that lead to land use changes, as more people need more food, shelter and industry, which all affect the climate.

He said that Indonesia needed to be more flexible and adaptable to climate change by improving its resilience.

“Building this resilience can be done through building infrastructure that can absorb [extreme] rainfall well, such as reservoirs coupled with dams whose capacities have been optimized,” Budi said.

Evi Anggraheni, a lecturer in water resource management at the University of Indonesia's Civil Engineering Department, agreed that climate change would lead to unstable weather that affected dams, particularly through erosion in upstream areas caused by extreme rainfall. This erosion leads to sedimentation in the reservoirs of dams.

“Conservation [of the environment] at the upstream of dams is needed to improve their performance,” Evi said.

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