An article by Zubaidah, The Straits Times.

BY 2050, up to 1,500 Indonesian islands will be wiped off the map.

By 2030, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, which serves the capital and is about 5km from the seafront, will be under water.

Capital Jakarta, with 40 per cent of its land below sea level and sinking, will see its northern districts transformed into lakes then.

These bleak projections reflect scientific predictions of the effects of climate change on Indonesia, if nothing more is done.

The Indonesian archipelago has some 17,000 islands, with about 6,000 permanently inhabited.

“This archipelago’s biggest threat is rising sea levels, where 42 million people living 3km from the coast are vulnerable if estimated sea level rise reaches up to 90cm by the end of the century,” said Mr Ancha Srinivasan, principal climate change specialist with the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

He joins the increasing number of scientists sounding the alarm bells on the harmful effects of climate change, which they say will hit Indonesia hard, given its 80,000km coastline that makes it the second-longest in the world, and the vastness of a country where the poor are also the most impacted and unprepared.

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