UTS Mata Kuliah KAPITA SELEKTA

(Dosen Pengajar: Mari Mulyani, S.Hum., M.Si., Ph.D.)

Universitas Indonesia, Maret 2017

ZEFFA APRILASANI
NPM : 1506813183

Public Lecture:
“CLIMATE CHANGE – THE GREATEST OPPORTUNITY OF OUR TIME”
By : Prof. Sir David King - UK Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change

Climate change as the result of greenhouse gasses (GHG) emission from many of human
activities such as anthropogenic, industrial, agriculture, energy, transportation, fuel burning,
and forest fire – is currently a big issue and could be the most severe issue for human race that
occurs when earth’s temperature rising and resulting in arctic ice melt as well as sea level rise.
Based on climate projection, it showed the in Europe during summer on the year of 1900 to
2100 was estimated around 6oC -8oC of temperature rising will take place in 2100. According
to temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies
(GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.99°C since 1880 to
2016. As stated by NASA:

“A one-degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat

to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much. In the past, a one- to
two-degree drop was all it took to plunge the Earth into the Little Ice Age. A five-
degree drop was enough to bury a large part of North America under a towering
mass of ice 20,000 years ago.”

It was confirmed by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) along with scientists
that the world has being warmed by an average of about 0,85oC over the past 120 years.
According to IPCC and Paris Climate Conference of Parties (COP21), temperature rising
should not more than 2oC to avoid further damage by sea level rise, the main concern was the
threat for small island which possible to be drown and sea water intrusion toward coastal and
mainland area which affect water and food security. As summarize by the 5th IPCC risk
assessment, probabilities of extreme events, such as the failure of major rice crops in China
due to increasing in soil salinity caused by sea water intrusion. Thus, the price of rice
commodity in the world rose as the sudden demand escalation.
The agreement of COP21 has representatives of 195 countries on 12 December 2015 and later
ratified in 2016. It aims to maintain the rate of increasement in global temperature to be below
2⁰ C, with a target of 1.5⁰ C. The effective adaptation and mitigation depends on several
policy and action at international, regional, national and sub-national level.

To fullfill COP21 mission and to avoid accelerate climate change, so the impact of climate
change could be minimize, several things need to be conducted. One of the most important
things was risk assessments which at least consider three factors: (1) the future trend of global
emission; (2) direct impact emerging from climate response; and (3) the risk that may occur
from the climate change and complex human interaction. Moreover, risk reduction has to
implement which consist of two complementary actions: (1) adaptation to climate change, and
(2) mitigation through the reduction of GHG emissions.

The main concern of GHG emmision in Indonesia was from forest fire. The forest fire occured
in 2015 has suffered Indonesia from a loss of USD 16,1 billion which equal to 1.9% of
Indonesia 2015 GDP, it exclude intangible loss such as long term health issue and emotional
damage, moreover the haze which headed to Singapore made it as a trans-boundaries
environmental issue. The forest fire may happened due to lack of supervision, especially the
peat land which has great impact of GHG emission when burned. In the future, sufficient
supervision and strong law enforcement require to prevent forest fire. Another main issue was
the sea level rise, approximately 1500 Indonesia’s islands could be underwater by 2050 and 42
million people living 3 km from the coast are vulnerable.

One solution proposed to reduce GHG was the innovation of low-carbon transition as the “the
greatest opportunity of our time”. Clean energy need to be accelerate to achieving
environmental performance breakthrough and cost reduction in providing an affordable and
reliable clean energy so the net zero emission could be reach by 2050 as targetting by The
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Meanwhile it also has economic prospect
in the development of the technology and systems to transform fossil fuel consumption toward
sustainable low-carbon innovation. For instance, Varial Clift air ship which is under
production. This airship is made from aluminum and claimed as an economical range of heavy-
lift airships. It has 12 chambers, each chamber contains helium compressed so the airship will
be lifted when helium released. It has very efficient fuel combustion with around 80-90 % less
fuel consumption than common airship. Another example was Global Apollo Programme
which is a call for a major global science and economics research programme to make carbon-
free baseload electricity less costly than electricity from coal by the year 2025. Sir David
emphasize the importance of gaining public funding for research development from countries
around the world to make a clean energy public research.

In my opinion, Indonesia has made an effort considering Appolo Programme in green energy,
for example biogas electricity plant from palm oil mill effluent which become governmental
project. Moreover before moving toward high green technology, Indonesia need to repair law
enforcement system and supervision to reduce GHG with it’s main cause – forest fire. One
possible best solution to make policy for the expansion of palm oil plantation and decisive
punishment for the culprit of forest fire tragedy. Moreover, accelerate biogas electricity plant
and it’s intergration over cities or island so it could solve GHG from fuel based electricity and
palm oil industries, as well as electricity efficiency in several of Indonesia area.