Climate Change: Fly Around and Fly High in the Sky

Climate Change: Fly Around and Fly High in the Sky

Tony Djogo = Late  2014

I am worried so much about climate change. But what I am much more worry about is the way we address or anticipate climate change. Are we sure or be convinced that we will be able to slow down global warming, reduce carbon (and other GHG) emission, increase carbon sequestration by planting more trees, stabilize the unstable atmospheric conditions, reduce fossil fuel consumption, use more renewable energy, build climate change awareness, develop more environmentally friendly construction and adaptable to any weather pattern or climate change?

I am often in doubt.  They are not only time consuming and costly, but absolutely rely on moral force, ethics, political will, business calculation and concerted efforts by all means and all countries using or adopting applicable and robust methods, techniques and tools. Many of our discussions and analysis have not been appropriately transformed into design and implementation for anticipating climate change. 

For climate change believers, climate change is taking place slowly and gradually, but could significantly dangerous. It may later on run faster (some already taking place in the climate time frame) while our responses are too slow or neither systematic nor applicable. At the same time there are some people who do not believe that climate change is taking place  on our planet.

I  am worried so much that institutions and people who are concerned and working with climate change issues have been very much dominated their engagement more in research, conference, seminar, discussion, workshop without clear outputs  or follow up with practical  actions. Discussions on climate changes, its tools, policies, instruments and institutional arrangements become more theoretical than practical. We have a lot of ideas, envisions and dreams,  big analysis, but sort of actions. Climate change issues and actions become more politicized or  object of project oriented rathern problem solving oriented actions.

Many people and institutions who never worked with climate change before suddenly become experts in climate change. Those who used  to work with forest conservation, biology, social sciences such as anthropology, politics,  community  development;  plant and agriculture, silviculture, economy, law, etc.,  suddenly become experts in climate change. Wouw!

I saw some proposals, presentation or papers using photographs from the spots that are not really relevant to the climate change problems or issues to be addressed, but just to make it catchy and  attractive,  but nothing. Really manipulative. Some people become experts in making presentation, public speaking, lecturing, preaching  or facilitating group discussions on climate change, but they do not really understand what they are talking about.

I met many people from many parts of the world or from Indonesia whether they are laymen or scientists, politicians, NGOs or universities who talked about climate change. I got mixed feelings and complicated conclusions. Some of them did not really understand, some make up stories, made the wrong decision, manipulative, developed wrong and bad research design, have too high expectation, make false promises, some are frustrating some are looking for more money for their project without a clear understanding about the real situation or condition that need to be addressed through reliable and robust climate change adaptation or mitigation actions.

I have attended so many meetings on climate change I got confused. I often saw no clear connection between the ideas generated in one meeting to other meetings. I got a lot of issues and analysis, but I have no idea how they could be used to design sound climate change mitigation or adaptation. Some are baseless, some are fantasy while some are good and potential to be developed into action. But no follow up  actions   in the form of  good design.

I attended seminars or discussions on REDD for almost ten years now. I have no idea how REDD projects could be really implemented in this country  tha twill bring about tangible and long term results and impacts. I wonder if there are success stories to learn and to replicate somewhere else. Too much money has been spent for research, discussion, seminar, workshop, etc., but there are no robust technical design and implementation on the ground. There are a lot of confusions and misunderstandings and expectations about REDD at the local level. Some projects started to be implemented but will they be sustainable? Hope so!

Because of my job, I have a lot of time or opportunities to go to the field to visit projects, talk to people and look at the degraded forest or ecosystems, discuss local policies and action in forest conservation and development. Certainly I have no idea at all about local governments policy, design and action to address climate change problems.They think it is the central government issues and depen upon the central government policy, budget and decision making .

In one village in Sumatra I was asked by local community: “Hey friend, we hear that PT REDD will come to our village to distribute the REDD money?”  PT REDD means REDD Company. In North Sumatra I met one Head of District Government in 2009, he asked :”Where is REDD Money?” If there is no REDD money come to my district I will let my people to resort to the forest to cut the trees and get the money. Three years ago I met a local government official in Flores and he said:” I have talked to the local people in the town or village not to cut the trees in their farm of their home garden it is REDD”. Recently, I was in Aceh, where I met a local NGO representative who said to me that there is district,  where the Head of the District Government has issued a letter of decision appointing a special team  or task force who will organize and manage REDD money, when REDD money arrive in the district. Amazing! Need to check it out! 

At the national level people get confused about the institutional arrangement and mechanism for implementing REDD. There are some tensions between the Ministry of Forestry and Ministry of Finance about the money and benefit sharing mechanism. The establishment of the ad-hoc institutions such as DNPI and REDD+ Agency has caused concerns about their roles and responsibilities their power and authorities. Will  they be able to address  the key problems caused by the climate change? Will the parliament take into account and  approve the budget for climate change mitigation or adaptation programs? 

Some universities or research institutions and NGOs  have designed strange climate change related projects. For instance, one NGO designed a Low Carbon Development Project and the other design a Green Economic Development project at the district and village level, but when I look at the rationale and logic of the project design I get lost. The projects have nice title, good intention or objectives,   but they were designed without reliable base line data and with unclear target to achieve. Will local people understand those projects? I saw one project which was designed with fantasy, theorize the ideas and envision for making change to  reduce climate change impacts by making up stories and hypothesis and manipulating data.

Some research projects also become opportunistic or adventuresome. I see some research projects or papers with nice title, but when I look at the content of the paper or publication they are fantasy, trying to make a link or interlocking one or some other aspects of one or some aspect of climate change to justify their scientific methods and results, but lost its essence, substance and practicality or practical implications. No idea who will be using the research findings or who really want to solicit researchers to provide scientific advice for policy design and implementation based on the findings of their scientific research? As usual one of the recommendations of research is the need for more research.  Who will implement the recommendations from those researches?

Weather, climate or climate change is not new for me.  I was a non-permanent assistant to my lecturer (My respectful lecturer  and a very humble person Pak Effendy Manan)  on Agricultural Climatology at IPB between 1978 – 1980.  I learned a lot about weather, climate change, atmosphere, carbon, nitrogen etc.

When I lived in the highland of Flores between1960 – 1975, I understood very well about and experienced with the greenhouse effect that was not caused by the carbon dioxide (CO2) but the humidity (H20)   that trapped the heat from the ground and caused warmer temperature in the evening. Not only me. Many people in my home town Bajawa (1,200 meters ASL) always talked since I was a little boy,  that people will be very glad when it was hot and sunny in the morning and then it was rainy or cloudy in the afternoon, because it will be warm during the night time.

When I was a kid around 1960s – 1969, the air temperature in Bajawa (Flores), was very low and cold for Indonesian standard. There were not many cars or motorbikes. The environment was so nice, calm and quiet, many trees, people were so nice and friendly. I believe the temperature could go down as low as 15 – 18 degree centigrade on the average.  I recall every housewife,  including my lovely mother always cooked our daily meals using coconut oil. Coconut oil used to be stored in a bottle made of glass not plastic. Coconut  oil will get frozen in the morning so we have to place it close to the simple stove made of three stones when we were burning some firewood.

No one or probably only a few people used kerosene stove during that era. There was no electricity until I was about to enter secondary school.  We used kerosene lamp for lightning. Some people used jatropha seeds by burning it. There were later on some electric generators powered by diesel engine installed in the Catholic Church and at the residence of the head of the District Government (Bupati) sometime before the 1970s. Sometime the diesel engine could not be ignited because the temperature of the air and the diesel was so low. So the mechanic should warm up the engine or the diesel fuel tank with fire. Gas (LPG) stove probably just been introduced later in the 1990s or early 2000s. 

The air temperature was low so sometime we got hail. Kids will be so happy when the hail came to the town and precipitated some ice with the average size of corn seeds or peanuts. Me too. So thrilled. It was so nice to hear the noise of ice drops on our corrugated iron roof. While covering our heads with flat basket we run into the street to collect ice put in our mouth or threw to  friends or brothers for fun. Now the hail is rarely occurring. And people said the rainfall pattern changed. The temperature is higher, but the difference between day and night temperature has widened. They never talked about scientific reasons for this  greenhouse effect. But they know something happened with the weather.

I met some people in Eastern Indonesia, Java or Sumatra who  expressed  their concerns about the changes in rainfall pattern, wind speed and direction,  increase  of  air temperature or atmospheric instability.  Many  people  who are specialized in  climate change talked about carbon, temperature, but I have never heard,  any of them talked  about atmospheric instability where we hear or experience with more whirlwind,  typhoon, tornadoes, changes in  atmospheric pressures, wind speed and direction  etc. No idea about the fishermen talked about climate change except that they were provoked by the scientists. 

I already talked a lot about climate and climate changed  when I was a lecturer at Faculty of Agriculture at University of Nusa Cendana in Kupang where I taught agricultural climatology  around thirty years ago since 1983-1997  and then at State Agriculture Polytechnic in Kupang in West Timor  since 1989-1997.

When I was lecturing climatology or climate change, my favorite topics were: greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide and the increased temperature causing the melting of snow caps on the top of the Iceberg in Papua, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania or Himalaya in Nepal although we have no snow in NTT. I was lucky to see the shrinking of snow caps in Himalayas and in California. My other favorite topic is the atmospheric instability.

I got some opportunities to attend some trainings, seminars or workshops   in climatology and climate changes as well as natural resource economics in Indonesia and overseas. I was lucky to understand various aspects of climate change and their relation or interlocking to atmospheric chemistry and physics, development, economy and policies, hydrology,   biodiversity and plant successions, adaptation and mitigation.  I was lucky, but got confused how could I use or adopt those theories and sciences?

More or less over the last ten years I heard many new terms such green development, green economics, low carbon development, low emission development, etc. Nice but unclear, how they will be or have been implemented. As many new models, terms approaches that have been introduced to Indonesia, almost all of them do not work.

I get the opportunities to manage several climate related projects. Research and action often disconnected to make an impact or transform theory into practice. Many Universities and NGOS who submitted proposals for conservation and climate change did not really understand on how to address climate change issues. They like or prefer to request funds for working with meeting, workshops, policy, campaign and outreach or capacity building, but they do not really understand the results and impacts of those activities.  I hate to read and approve these kinds of activities since those proponents would like to make a change in this world within only through one day seminar or two-day training or institutional development?

Many people do not understand climate change, the drivers, the process and impacts.   We may talk about awareness raising for climate change, as we have done a lot with projects, but with limited impacts related to forest and other aspects of environmental conservation. Government, scientists or even NGOs do not talk with simple and appropriate language to be easily understood by the local people.  Not only in Indonesia, but also in other countries. I was travelling with a group of people from various countries to a town near Lake Tahoe at the elevation of 6,225 ft. (1,897 m) in the US. The weather in this town could change in any hours any time every day when I was there. It could be warm and sunny in the morning with the bright and blue sky, but could suddenly be snowy, cold and freezing with no sunshine at all mixed with rain. I went to a souvenir shop with my friends. The owner asked us:”Hey guys how are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing here? I said:” Oh hey! We are here for climate change training”. She quickly responded (It was freezing with a lot of snow on the street): Oh great please make it warm!” 

I started to plant trees with local communities in a remote area in Flores, in Desa Gerodhere working with Yayasan Geo Meno since 1985. It was almost thirty years ago when I worked with local communities planted the trees on their farms without any ideas and promise or even fantasy that planting the trees will help sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. I introduced the planting of trees to help local poor people in a poor village where my father was born. They are lack of fuel wood, timber, fodder, their soil fertility is very low that caused the unproductive farm lands and that local farmers have to practice shifting cultivation or sedentary farming. Almost thirty years later some people come to the village and claimed that this is an interesting and example of carbon sequestration effort. Bullshit! Pathetic! 

I worked and still been working a lot to support forest and biodiversity conservation in Sumatra and Kalimantan through several projects. It is very difficult to get convinced that conservation projects will be successful and I am so worried about the future of forestry and biodiversity including the protection and conservation of flagship species in Indonesia. We have so many projects with million dollars contributed by donors to working with conservation but many are failing. We have many good analyses and policy framework developed at both the national and the international levels but the implementation of conservation action at the local level is questionable and not sustainable. Conservation in Indonesia is very gloomy on the ground. The more research and discussion we have, the more projects we get the more destruction we find in the field. The more research and studies we have on sustainable forest management the more unsustainable forest management we found, more forest destroyed, degraded and changed their status and function, biodiversity and wildlife population declining significantly and quickly.  Many people like to talk about sustainability and sustainable development, but it is very difficult to see sustainability and long term  sustainable impact of a sustainable management project.

The same situation may happen with climate change, the more we conduct research and produce papers, more seminars, workshops or FGDs, more institutional arrangements or policies we have to anticipate climate changes, the more damaging caused by climate change will be encountered. Believe me. So we need more engineers, pragmatic policy designer for climate change mitigation and adaptation, we need more action on the ground, research should be more practical and problem solving oriented, not for producing more papers and request more money for more research, workshops, conferences etc. I would love to meet and discuss and design something with this kind of people if any.

Climate change and its related sciences cannot convince government and people with robust and reliable scientific data and justification to make people aware and take action. Too much modelling, too much interpretation, wrong prediction and manipulated or inconsistent data, too much abstract design and complicated theory presented to the public. I worry so much that climate change problems and the project will only benefit to some high level people and institutions that can develop proposals for climate projects,  but bring about no benefit at all to the local people and their environment.

Things may become more complicated when some people who usually be classified as the climate skeptic or climate deniers disbelieve that the climate is changing. This make some senator in the US reacted differently,  or people like  the former U.S. Vice President Al Gore proposes to "punish climate change deniers."  Gore also suggests that politicians who reject "accepted science" should also pay the price. Gore, an active environmental activist, spoke about the climate crisis at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas (Tech Times March 17, 2015)