JAKARTA — Rising sea levels could inundate about 2,000 Indonesian islands by 2030, and rice shortages are expected next year due to wild weather blamed on climate change, the environment minister said Monday.
The assessment by Rachmat Witoelar was the government's bleakest yet of global warming's potential effects on the mostly poor Southeast Asian country of about 18,000 islands, most of them unpopulated.
“It is very, very serious,” Mr. Witoelar said at a news conference attended by Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate treaty secretariat.
Mr. Witoelar said respected scientific studies showed about 2,000 islands would be swallowed by rising waters by 2030. He did not say whether the threatened islands were inhabited or not.
Delayed rains this year, followed by a hot spell, also hurt farmers.
“It is feared there will be a lack of rice production next year because of the changes in the weather and because the farmers are not used to this,” he said.
Mr. De Boer was in Jakarta to discuss a major UN climate-change meeting later this year on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. Environment ministers from 80 countries will meet there to begin talks on what actions the world must take after the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012.
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