"It is true that Indonesia has been known as a country that is highly prone to natural disasters," he remarked during an activity titled "Disaster Kaleidoscope 2023 and Disaster Outlook 2024" in Jakarta on Friday.
Suharyanto noted that during the 2020-2023 period, thousands of natural disasters had struck Indonesia, with 4,940 disasters having occurred last year and about six thousand disasters been recorded over the course of the 2020-2021 period.
He further elaborated on the natural disasters plaguing Indonesia in 2023 while saying that they were dominated by those related to hydrometeorology, such as floods, landslides, and extreme weathers.
The official then confirmed that Indonesia had been witnessing increases in the number of natural disasters though they had proven to not necessarily mirror the severity of the impacts.
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For instance, he said, the number of houses damaged by disasters in 2021 stood at 158,659, though the figure decreased to 95,403 in 2022 and further declined last year despite the country seeing intensified frequency of disasters in those years.
He stated that despite ranking among regions with the highest number of disasters, West Java Province did not record any damage to houses in as many as two provinces in Nusa Tenggara whose rate of natural disaster occurrences was, in fact, lower in comparison.
Suharyanto explained that the reason behind the trend is the fact that during the 2022-2023 period, the most frequent disasters in the Nusa Tenggara region were related to tropical cyclones instead of merely hydrometeorology.
"We cannot pay attention only to the number of disasters because an increase in the number does not necessarily reflect the severity of the impacts of disasters," he concluded.
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Translator: Astrid F, Tegar Nurfitra
Editor: Yuni Arisandy Sinaga
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