JAKARTA – An expert of environment has sounded the alarm on global warming as the increase of earth temperature in September 2023 compared to that of pre-industrial revolution period had reached 1.75 degrees Celsius.
Mahawan Karuniasa, the environment expert from the University of Indonesia (UI) and the CEO of Environment Institute, said that the increase has exceeded the safe limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius set in the Paris Agreement as a global agreement to control the climate change.
“Despite the average increase during January-September 2023 was still at 1.4 degrees Celsius, but it is unexpected and must be taken seriously,” he told the participants of a seminar on sustainable financing for energy transition at the UI Salemba campus in Jakarta on Friday, 06 October 2023.
He said that the temperature increase is based on the information from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which based it on the report of EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
The seminar was organized by the Environment Institute (ENVIRO) in cooperation with the School of Environment of UI, the Indonesian association of climate change and forestry experts (APIK Indonesia Network) and the association of UI School of Environment Alumni (ILUNI SIL UI).
Indonesia’s national emissions increased in 2021 after seeing a drastic decrease in 2020 due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and the La Nina phenomenon during the year.
In 2021, Indonesia’s total emissions reached 1.14 Gigaton CO2e, with emissions at the agricultural, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) rising by 21 Megaton CO2e to 891 Megaton CO2e.
It is feared that unless planting and controlling of forest and land fires (Karhutla), the El Nino phenomenon this year (2023) will further increase the emissions in the AFOLU sector.
Mahawan said that the emissions from the energy sector had also continually increased to 596 Megaton CO2e in 2021. “We need to pay serious attention to the emissions from the energy sector which will be rising continually. It could reach up to 58% of the total emissions on condition of business as usual in 2030, as the report of Global Stock Take UNFCCC in 2023 shows that the global emissions dominated by fossil fuels will not be in line with the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius set in Paris Agreement,” he said.
According to him, it is highly potential that global warming will surpass the 1.5 degrees Celsius permanently. “Therefore, we need to accelerate the energy transition by intensively increasing the investments in clean and ecofriendly energy sources, which are now badly needed to prevent the global warming from worsening,” Mahawan said. (*)
Source: sawitku.id