The Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said there had been a staggering 185 natural disasters in Indonesia in the first three weeks of 2021 alone.

“Most are in the form of floods, hurricanes and landslides,” Professor Wiku Adisasmito from BNPB, who is also the national COVID-19 task force spokesperson, said in a press conference this week.

In the month of January last year, Indonesia recorded 297 disasters, including floods in the Jakarta metropolitan area and landslides in West Java.

But this year’s disasters have been more deadly — 166 people died so far in January 2021, compared to 91 people who lost their lives in natural disasters in January 2020.

Environmental disasters are not unusual for Indonesia, with the country recording a total of 2,291 disasters in 2020.

The archipelago also sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates collide, causing frequent volcanic activity as well as earthquakes.

But environmentalists say forest destruction and climate change are impacting the severity of the disasters.

Greenpeace Indonesia told the ABC that floods, landslides, and forest fires had dominated the list of disasters in Indonesia in recent years, particularly in areas where forest conditions were “already critical”.

“It’s strongly related to the accumulated damage to forests that have an impact on climate change,” said Arie Rompas, the forest campaign team leader at Greenpeace Indonesia.

“So the ecosystem is disrupted and this is implicated in floods, landslides, drought and forest fires.”

More than a million people displaced
South Kalimantan on Borneo island declared a state of emergency last week, after heavy rainfall and flooding displaced tens of thousands of people.

“In my entire life, this is the worst flood ever,” local resident Ratna Dewi Sartika told the ABC.

She said that in some areas the water level rose to as high as three metres and many residents were trapped in their houses.

On Friday last week, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in West Sulawesi killed at least 90 people and has left thousands homeless.

Many residents are living in makeshift tents after their homes were badly damaged by an earthquake in West Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Days after that deadly earthquake, Semeru volcano in East Java erupted, spewing hot ash clouds as far as 4.5 kilometres away.

Villages in the mountains have been told to stay on alert for ongoing volcanic activity.

And earlier this month, landslides were reported at Cihanjuang Village in the Sumedang district of West Java, 150 kilometres south-east of Jakarta.

Local authorities in West Java said a total of 40 victims who died in the landslide have been found.

The BNPB said as of January 21, at least 166 people have died, more than 1,200 were injured and more than 1.3 million people have been displaced in total due to the series of disasters.

Earlier this week, President Joko Widodo visited Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan to monitor the floods that have inundated the area for more than a week.

He said Borneo island hadn’t experienced flooding in half a century.

“The rainfall was very high for almost 10 consecutive days, so the capacity of the Barito River overflowed to 10 districts,” Mr Widodo said during an online press conference on Monday.

A day later, Mr Widodo also visited the places and victims affected by the earthquake in West Sulawesi.

Ridwan Alimuddin, a local resident in West Sulawesi, said the local Government’s response “wasn’t optimal”.

He said it seemed that the assistance was more focused on Mamuju, the capital city of West Sulawesi province, while the most affected areas were three regencies close to the epicentre.

“We could see the delay [of distributing aid], many displaced people have put signboards on the road to ask for donations,” Mr Alimuddin told the ABC.

“Recently people were fighting over aid packages when the cars distributing relief came.”