It was certainly good news for Indonesia that it moved up the latest Human Development Index, the internationally accepted standard for measuring a country's welfare.
Indonesia's overall human development score increased from 0.711 last year to 0.728, placing it 107th among 177 countries surveyed. Indonesia has been on a rising curve since 1975, although the climb has been slow, even slower than Southeast Asian neighbor Vietnam.
Perhaps the general public does not care, or understand, the meaning of the data, which is updated every year. But the fact that after more than three decades since the first Human Development Report was published, Indonesia has not risen any higher than 107th despite its wealth of natural resources should be cause for concern.
There have clearly been flaws in how the country has utilized its natural resources, which have not benefited all Indonesians. There was a time when a centralized system of government sacrificed the regions and the bulk of the population.
But the winds of change have swept across the country and many steps have been taken to try and atone for past mistakes. But the challenge of poverty alleviation does not stop there. The road to prosperity will be longer and more winding for Indonesia, as described in the latest Human Development Report.
This year's report intentionally raised the red alert that many developing countries, including Indonesia, could have their fight against poverty sabotaged by climate change.
As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned, climate change threatens a twin catastrophe, with early setbacks in human development for the world's poor being succeeded by longer term dangers for all of humanity.
We have already seen the early catastrophes in many parts of the country, with more frequent flooding, landslides and longer droughts. In all of these events, the poor have been disproportionately affected because they simply lack resources.
When floodwaters submerged many parts of Jakarta last February, more than 422,000 people were forced to leave their homes. However, low income residents suffered the most because they lacked the resources to locate alternative shelter, so were forced to remain in their flooded homes or move to poorly equipped temporary shelters provided by the city.
When an extended drought hit eastern areas of Java a few years ago, again poor farmers suffered the most because they did not have any savings to help them ride out failed harvests.
It is the responsibility of all of us, and in particular the government, to help low income citizens cope with the adverse impacts of climate change. And helping these people will require money.
To that end, we support the government's initiative to fight for the establishment of a global funding mechanism, through the Special Climate Change Fund, to help developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Besides funding, better adaptation strategies are also vital because the impacts of climate change are very much predictable.
The various studies show, for example, that if we continue business as usual, large parts of the eastern coast of Sumatra island will disappear, as well as parts of Borneo's coastal areas and southern parts of Papua island. Also to be affected will be the northern coast of Java, including Jakarta, where millions of people live.
Since we know this could happen as soon as 20 years from now, we must act now to prevent it from happening. It is vital that the government incorporate environmental considerations in policy formulation and planning.
Needless to say, efforts to avert this looming catastrophe will fail without support from the general public, including the business sector. The very least people can do is change their exploitative lifestyles, while the private sector can invest more in nature conservation.
Everybody bears the responsibility for saving nature. Act now, before it is too late.