Dina Manafe & Robertus Wardi – More than 500 lives are lost each year as the toll from floods and landslides continues increasing each year, official figures show.
A total of 5,650 lives, or an average of 514 people per year, lost their lives due to disasters from 2003 to 2013, while an average of 1.5 million people a year had to evacuate from their homes, according to data from the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, or BNPB.
The data also showed Indonesia was hit by a total of 6,288 flood and landslide incidents over the past 11 years – 572 incidents per year – with the highest figure recorded in 2010 at 1,433. "Flood and landslide disasters are actually contributed [to] by all kinds of factors," BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said on Tuesday.
He cited anthropogenic causes – those originating from human activity – as the main factor contributing to the disasters, as well as changing rain patterns in which rain intensity was rising.
Sutopo said population growth, urbanization, land conversion, low awareness of the importance of correctly disposing of rubbish, poor spatial planning, lack of soil and water conservation and more were major factors that contributed to increased risk of flooding.
Sutopo cited that 68 watershed areas in the country were in critical condition and soil had reached overcapacity due to high forest degradation.
Forested areas typically serve to absorb rainwater runoff. Indonesia's forest cover amounted to 49.4 percent of its total area in 2008 and dropped to 47.7 percent in 2012. Java only had 16.1 percent forest cover, a far cry from the ideal level of 30 percent.
Sutopo also stressed the importance of strictly implementing spatial planning that took disaster risks into consideration. He said there were already many regulations and bylaws issued to regulate environmental, flood and landslide matters, yet implementation was poor.
Sutopo added that disasters were not only the government's concern but should also be those of the business sector and the public in general. "Ministries and government institutions have made various efforts in line with their portfolios. Disasters should serve as a wake-up call to fix all the problems or else they will continue to happen," he said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who presided over a limited cabinet meeting on disaster mitigation on Tuesday morning, said the management of disaster mitigation was still under control and that he had communicated with several governors to discuss their handling of incidents.
"For your information, I have spoken directly to the governors who are dealing with disasters, among them are [the] Jambi, Bengkulu, Central Java, South Sulawesi and Maluku governors. They are all managing and mitigating floods in their respective areas," he said.
Yudhoyono said he had also spoken to the Jakarta, North Sulawesi, North Sumatra and West Java governors prior to the meeting.
The president attributed the current conditions to the impact of "unfriendly global weather conditions," noting that other parts of the world were also experiencing disasters. "I have been following [the global situation] and in some parts there are floods while there are forest fires in other places," he said.