Indonesia’s imams are doing their bit for the environment.Jakarta is constantly under aquatic assault, from above and below.Last month three pupils died when their school collapsed amid a downpour.In 2020 the worst deluge in over a decade killed dozens and displaced nearly 400,000 people.With 13 rivers flowing through it, the Indonesian capital has always flooded.But the frequency and severity of floods is growing.Parts of the city are sinking into the sea at a rate of 25cm (ten inches) each year.A similar story is unfolding in other parts of Indonesia.Floods displaced over 600,000 people in the archipelagic country last year.The World Bank warns that up to 4.2m Indonesians could be exposed to permanent flooding by the end of the century.In the drier seasons, droughts cause forest fires, threatening Indonesia’s 94m hectares (230m acres) of forest.Yet a country so exposed to the dangers of climate change is also a hotbed of climate denialism.A recent YouGov-Cambridge poll found that 13% of Indonesians say climate change is not caused by humans, just a shade less than the proportion in America.Indonesia’s imams, part of the influential Islamic establishment, want to change that.
