Natural Disasters Indonesia 2024: Rising sea levels are displacing villagers in Indonesia. Last year alone, the island flooded five (5) times… ‘And the Islands Disappeared and Were Found No More.’ (Revelation 16:20 Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found.)
Climate change affects many people on Indonesia’s coast. Residents in Timbulsloko adapt to life with rising seawaters
The small island paradise of Pulau Pari is located an hour north-west of Jakarta. Its population of 1,500 inhabitants subsist mainly from fishing and tourism. In recent years, the island has increasingly been affected by rising sea waters, which have claimed 11 per cent of its surface area in the last decade and threaten to submerge it entirely. Last year alone, the island flooded five times.
With the support of several NGOs, a group of Pulau Pari’s residents have decided to take legal action against the Swiss company Holcim, the world’s leading cement manufacturer and one of its top 50 greenhouse gas emitters. In a press release issued in February 2023, the plaintiffs call for “compensation for climate damages they have suffered, a financial contribution to flood-protection measures, as well as the rapid reduction of Holcim’s CO2 emissions”.
According to the organisers of the Call for Climate Justice campaign, “this marks the first time that a Swiss corporation could be held legally accountable for its role in climate change”. The campaign’s organisers believe that Holcim, based in the Swiss city of Zug, is doing “too little to reduce its emissions so as not to exceed the threshold of 1.5°C of global warming”.
Holcim was active in Indonesia until 2019, when it sold its business to local cement manufacturer Semen Indonesia. According to one study, however, the company has emitted more than 7 billion tonnes of CO2 since 1950, accounting for 0.42 per cent of all global fossil fuel emissions and more than twice as much as Switzerland has emitted since the start of the industrial revolution.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/02/1133492
Ecologists estimate that most of the 42-hectare island could be under water by 2050.
Threatened by rising sea levels, 58 Small Island Developing States (SIDS) located around the globe are suffering some of the worst impacts of climate change, even though they are least responsible for it: together they account for just 1 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
For years, the inhabitants of these disappearing atolls have been fighting to save their land. At COP27, held last December in Egypt, the small island countries called for a tax on the profits of fossil fuel multinationals, which would be used to help poor nations adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.
The plaintiffs are demanding €14,000 in compensation for the damage caused. While a paltry sum, this money could be used to finance the preservation and expansion of the mangrove forest. This is the second international case of this kind brought by residents of the Global South against a major Western company.
Asmania runs a small shop and guest house on the island. With her husband, she bought part of a fish farm off the coast. Floods contaminated the farm with grey water and kept tourists away for months. Climate change is affecting her future and her family’s future.
Asmania knows that if they want to continue living on their island, they have to adapt. But the islanders don’t have the resources to do so. “We urgently need a water filtration system for those times when the sea floods our wells with salt water,” explains Asmania.
Fishing is one of the primary economic activities of the region’s inhabitants. They are already seeing a decline in fish stocks that is threatening this activity. “For a few days after the floods, I couldn’t go out fishing. I also had to repair my boat. The water had washed it ashore and smashed it against a tree,” says Bobby, a fisherman involved in the complaint against Holcim.
Edi, who lives on the island with his wife and their three young children, owns two guest houses and offers activities to tourists from Jakarta. After the floods, his income suffered when many of his customers cancelled. “We have to do more than just building concrete dykes. It’s not good for the environment. We should be planting more mangroves,” he says.
In June 2023, Edi and Asmania were chosen by other villagers to travel to Switzerland to discuss their island’s plight. They have received support in their legal battle from three NGOs: Entraide Protestante Suisse (HEKS/EPER), the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and the Indonesian Forum for Living Environment (WALHI).
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In His Service,
Night Watchman
Paul Rolland
Night Watchman Ministries
Make Your (7) Decision for Christ NOW!!!!!!! Time is Up!!!!!!!
Jesus Christ’s Offer of Salvation:
The ABCs (7) of Salvation through Jesus Christ (the Lamb)
- (7) Admit/Acknowledge/Accept that you are sinner. Ask (7) God’s forgiveness and repent of your sins.
. . . “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
. . . “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8).
B. Believe Jesus is Lord. Believe that (7) Jesus Christ is who He claimed to (7) be; that He was both fully God (7) and fully man and that we are (7) saved through His death, burial, and resurrection. (7) Put your trust in Him as your (7) only hope of salvation. Become a son (7) or daughter of God by receiving Christ. (7777777) 7×7
. . . “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).
C. Call upon His name, Confess (7) with your heart and with your lips (7) that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.
. . . “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (John 1:8-10).
. . . “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:2).
. . . “In this was manifested the love of god toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:9, 14-15).
. . . “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-10).
. . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).
. . . “Jesus saith unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).
. . . “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” (Romans 1:16).
. . . “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts: 4:12).
. . . “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth for there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:4-6).
. . . “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).
. . . “But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12).
True Church / Bride of Christ Spared from God’s Wrath:
Romans 5:8-10. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
Romans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
1 Thessalonians 5:9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Jeremiah 30:7. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.
Revelation 3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.