Jakarta – Two researchers from Indonesia who are members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are encouraging countries to take more ambitious and concrete climate actions.
Professors Edvin Aldrian and Joni Jupesta are two of the 34 global scientists who are members of the IPCC. The two Indonesian researchers hold important positions, Aldrian was re-elected as Vice Chair of Working Group I, while Jupesta is a member of The Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (TFI).
“We were elected based on a vote from IPCC member countries conducted in Nairobi, Kenya, 25 to 28 July 2023,” Aldrian said in a press release.
Since 2015, he has been trusted by IPCC members in the same position; however, Aldrian said the process to serve as Vice Chair of Working Group I this time was quite challenging as he had to compete with scientists from Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia.
According to Aldrian, IPCC voting applies regionally according to the candidate’s origin. Since he is from Indonesia, the voters come from region five, namely Southeast Asia, Southwest Pacific, and ASEAN. “Island countries like Tonga assist me, … and Muslim countries like Bangladesh, Bahrain, Turkey, and Latin America,” Aldrian said.
Aldrian said that he was motivated to return to the IPCC because he wanted to continue his research. Previously, he had prepared a projection and modelling in the Southeast Asia region in collaboration with researchers from the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The results of his research can be accessed on the IPCC website and utilised by countries in the world as a basis for policies related to climate change.
In his next assignment, Aldrian will conduct research for the 7th assessment report. This report focuses on three polar regions of the world: the first polar ice cap, the second polar region, and the third polar region in the Himalayas. He will also research urban climate as it relates to air pollution and its effect on health.
In addition, he hopes climate change mitigation policies must be stronger in the future. Because based on periodic IPCC calculations from 2018, the achievement of a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius is expected to occur in 2052.
However, this estimate worsened when the projection was made again three years later or in 2021, where a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius would occur in 2042. The latest findings this year, a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius will be achieved in 2030.
Joni Jupesta, an active lecturer and researcher at The United Nations University (UNU) Tokyo, Japan, also shared the same sentiment. He agreed that climate change mitigation needs to be done more aggressively. In the future, this task force will harmonise data between countries. (Hartatik)
