Opinion: BNPB Needs to Calculate Landscape Changes in Disaster Risk Studies

Forest and land fires (karhutla) continue to spread in Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Papua to this day. The Kompas Data team found 11,929 hot spots between August 1 and 28, with 50.4% located in concessions, from palm oil plantations, timber utilization, and mining. These findings do not automatically mean that the presence of hot spots in concessions indicates the company is the perpetrator of the burning. The Ministry of Forestry emphasizes the need for field verification. However, the distribution pattern shows that the risk of fire is also related to how the land is used and changes over time. A similar situation can be seen in floods. Extreme rainfall is the direct trigger, but how much the rain turns into a disaster also depends on the condition of the catchment area, forest cover, river flow, land use, and changes in the landscape in the upstream areas. Therefore, in addition to looking at disaster management, it is also necessary to ask whether Indonesia's method of calculating risk captures the development process that contributes to increasing the risk? How to calculate risk is important Actually, Indonesia has a disaster risk assessment system through the Head of BNPB Regulation Number 2/2012 on General Guidelines for Disaster Risk Assessment. More than a decade after its issuance, this regulation is still valid and remains one of the important references for disaster risk assessment in Indonesia. InaRISK also still uses this Regulation in risk calculation through the components of hazard, vulnerability, and capacity. Disaster Risk Assessment (DRA) is not just a technical document. Its results serve as a basis for formulating disaster response policies and Disaster Management Plans in the region. The guidelines were designed from the beginning so that the risk assessment results could become risk reduction policies. The choice of indicators in the DRA determines what factors are then reflected in the maps and risk documents. Factors that are not well measured have the potential not to receive equal attention in policies. Actually, the BNPB Regulation No. 2/2012 is quite advanced for its time. Disasters are not solely defined as natural events. The guidelines recognize non-natural and human factors, even mentioning development policies that risk causing disasters as part of disaster management. Vulnerability is not only from the population size. It includes social, economic, physical, and environmental components. Social vulnerability includes considering population density, sex ratio, poverty, age groups, and disabilities. Environmental vulnerability uses land cover types such as protected forests, natural forests, mangroves, swamps, and scrublands. So, the problem is not that environmental factors are not accounted for at all. The problem is that the change in landscape over time has not been explicitly accounted for as part of the risk formation process. From vulnerable conditions to the process that makes it vulnerable The risk assessment guidelines mostly look at existing conditions. How many people are exposed, how many economic assets and infrastructure may be affected, how much environmental area is under threat, and how strong the region's capacity to cope with disasters. This approach is useful for picturing the risk condition when conducting the assessment, but it has not captured how risks are formed and change over time. For example, forest and land fires. The BNPB Regulation includes types of forests and lands, climate conditions, and soil types as hazard parameters for forest and land fires. But these indicators do not explicitly measure processes such as concession expansion, rapid land use change, forest clearing history, or the pressure of economic activities on a landscape. Lessons from the mining region In my research on nickel mining in Halmahera and Morowali, the relationship between landscape change and flood risk is quite clear. In the area around the Kobe River in Halmahera, the community said that their area has known about floods since long ago. However, they observed that before nickel mining expansion, the water receded faster. The clearing of forests and changes in catchment areas were followed by sedimentation and a worsening of the soil and vegetation's ability to retain water flow. A similar pattern is seen in Morowali. Mining and industrial areas developed simultaneously with major changes in the landscape in the upstream and downstream areas. The data I collected shows how the loss of tree cover, excavation in the upstream areas, and changes in topography are intertwined with increasing flood problems. Such findings do not mean that every flood in the mining region can be directly attributed to the mining company. Rainfall, river conditions, topography, settlement development, and many other factors remain important. That example shows that picturing risk at a single point in time is not enough. Forest loss in the last 10 years, changes in the condition of a watershed, opening of new mining areas, or expansion of plantations are parts of landscape changes that occur over time. This process can change the nature of the hazard as well as increase the vulnerability of the communities living in it. In disaster risk reduction literature, such processes are known as underlying disaster risk drivers, which are conditions or processes that increase exposure and vulnerability or reduce the capacity to cope with disasters. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) 2017, 2024 include, among others, the lack of risk consideration in land, environment, and natural resource management, the use of natural resources unsustainably, ecosystem degradation, and development policies not based on risk. The latest study on disaster risk creation also shows that development decisions can actively create or increase risk (Muir & Opdyke, 2024). Momentum to revise the DRA guidelines The momentum to improve this method is actually open. In the BNPB Strategic Plan 2025–2029, the revision of BNPB Regulation No. 2/2012 is explicitly in the regulatory agenda. The reason is the need for updating based on scientific developments, legal changes, and the latest learning. The revision can include indicators that capture the changes in landscape and development pressures over time. This does not mean that risk assessment must include a variable named "mining" or "plantation". The context of each disaster and region is different. What is needed is an analytical layer that can capture changes over time. For flood risk, for example, indicators can look at the loss of forest cover in catchment areas, changes in infiltration areas, watershed degradation, sedimentation, and changes in topography due to development activities. For forest and land fires, the analysis can consider the history of repeated fires, changes in land cover, deforestation, peatland management, and the development of concession activities. Data on who is most vulnerable, which houses are exposed, and the government's capacity remain important. If disaster management policies want to be truly preventive, DRA also needs to read who and what are changing the landscape, how that change is happening, and whether that change is creating new risks. Therefore, the revision of the DRA should not stop at updating old data and indicators. The landscape change that increases risk over time must also be calculated. *Author: Yogi Setya Permana, Researcher at the Center for Political Research, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) ***** Forest Fires Harm Public Health and Cause Economic Losses