By Mahawan Karuniasa
Environmental Expert, Universitas Indonesia
Indonesia’s position as a developing country renders it highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly hydrometeorological disasters such as floods, landslides, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events, including across Sumatra. This vulnerability persists amid increasingly alarming global scientific signals. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports that the global average surface temperature for January–August 2025 has already reached 1.42°C ± 0.12°C above the pre-industrial average, placing 2025 on track to become the second or third warmest year on record. Under increasingly “hotter” climate conditions, the atmosphere retains more water vapor, intensifying extreme rainfall, while sea-level rise and ocean warming amplify risks in coastal areas. These vulnerabilities remain despite Indonesia’s significant climate commitments through its Enhanced NDC and Second NDC, as well as various mitigation and adaptation policies. This reality underscores that developing countries’ efforts will not be effective without increased mitigation ambition, financing, and concrete contributions from the United States (which has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement) and other developed countries, in accordance with the principle of climate justice.
The COP30 Climate Conference in Belém delivered a mix of progress and disappointment, particularly on the core agendas of mitigation and climate finance. On the positive side, the strengthening of the Loss and Damage architecture, the establishment of Just Transition mechanisms, and the launch of the Belém Mission to 1.5°C marked constructive steps toward accelerating global action. However, COP30 also exposed critical failures: the absence of agreement to explicitly address or regulate fossil fuel phase-out, a stalemate on Article 6 regarding international carbon markets, delays in setting a new climate finance target or the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG), and minimal increases in adaptation ambition. The inertia of major emitters in defining clear mitigation roadmaps remains the greatest barrier to achieving the 1.5°C pathway—despite UNEP’s assertion that even with full implementation of all NDCs, the world is still headed toward approximately 2.3–2.5°C of warming, while current policy trajectories point to around 2.8°C. UNEP further notes that alignment with the Paris Agreement requires annual global emission reductions by 2035 of 35% (for the 2°C pathway) and 55% (for the 1.5°C pathway) relative to 2019 levels—cuts that demand substantial acceleration beginning this decade. In other words, without sharp course correction during 2025–2035, the “cost of disasters” will continue to rise, with the heaviest burden borne by vulnerable countries, including Indonesia.
In the context of finance and resilience, the global adaptation gap clarifies why developing countries cannot be left to confront the crisis alone. UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025 updates estimates of adaptation financing needs in developing countries to USD 310 billion per year by 2035, potentially reaching USD 365 billion annually when accounting for needs stated in NDCs and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs). Yet international public adaptation finance flows to developing countries amounted to only USD 26 billion in 2023 (down from USD 28 billion in 2022), meaning current adaptation needs are 12–14 times greater than available funding. UNEP also warns that if present financing trends continue, the Glasgow Climate Pact target to double international public adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025 will not be met.
Accordingly, Indonesia must demonstrate greater resolve in supporting the integrity of carbon markets and cross-border offset trading. Indonesia should establish significantly stronger and more credible carbon pricing for every international carbon credit transaction to ensure that mitigation contributions are genuine, rather than merely inexpensive offsets that exacerbate the crisis. At the same time, Indonesia must intensify diplomatic pressure for the United States to return to its Paris Agreement commitments and resume leadership in international climate finance, while demanding that developed countries raise their leadership standards by adopting Net Zero Emissions targets by 2040 or earlier, in line with scientific urgency and climate justice.
The major hydrometeorological disasters that struck three provinces on the island of Sumatra remind the world that the climate crisis is not a future threat, but a present reality. As the WMO confirms that concentrations of greenhouse gases—CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O—reached record levels in 2024 and continue to rise in 2025, the risks of extreme rainfall, flash floods, landslides, and disruptions to food systems will intensify, particularly in vulnerable tropical regions. Extreme impacts are becoming increasingly deadly because global preparedness remains uneven: while the number of countries reporting multi-hazard early warning systems more than doubled (from 56 to 119 countries in 2024), the WMO emphasizes that 40% of countries still lack such systems. This means that tragedies in developing countries are not merely “natural disasters,” but the result of the combined forces of emission-driven global warming and unequal adaptive capacity.
The intensity of extreme rainfall, large-scale flooding, and landslides that damage infrastructure and threaten public safety cannot be separated from the lack of meaningful mitigation action by developed countries—particularly the failure of the United States and other developed nations to significantly reduce emissions over the past decade. At this juncture, climate justice is not a slogan: every delay by developed countries in delivering their fair share of contributions translates into consequences borne by developing countries in the form of loss of life, economic damage, and development setbacks. COP30 sends a clear signal that the world requires far stronger mitigation commitments, substantially greater adaptation finance, and much faster action—before the next disaster claims more lives.
