About Iklimku

The deforestation rate in Indonesia is now getting alarming, as the logged forest is estimated to absorb less carbon emissions, which in turn will increase the earth’s temperature. This phenomenon may accelerate global warming, and eventually lead to climate change. We are doomed as the impacts of global warming have now sounded like a dystopian novel: rising sea levels, extreme weather affecting the crop failures and weakening our food security, to people who are displaced due to various natural disasters.

Despite these grimy dystopian projections, climate change has not been treated as an important subject by the policy makers, let alone for most people on this planet. The climate crisis faces these political and social factors as imminent challenges.

Government officials and policy makers still often deny the facts about the current environmental decline caused by climate change. They might regard climate change as an important issue but somehow failed to bring the case to be more openly discussed. The case will be ignored further if by chance it influences or brings a correlation to the affluent industry and business capital, especially those in the extractive industries.

Meanwhile, it is harder than ever to have a sense of urgency as to how to tackle the climate crisis. Each morning, almost every newsroom has brought their concern about climate change to our screen. Ironically, people failed to grasp its gravity. They think this problem is still far-reaching. We are too busy working errands, our attention is short-spanned and easily shifted. Thus, most people let it slip away, the fact that we have been living on an apocalyptic planet.

Climate change is happening right here, right now, in front of us all.

Despite these challenges, we believe we can do something. Indonesia is among the countries with the largest smartphone and social media users. We believe we can make impacts if we can mobilize this concern—an awareness of climate change mitigation urgency—to gradually increase among the people as well as policy makers. We are here to make a change together with the birth of this platform. iklimku.org.

Iklimku(dot)org or iklimku, is initiated by several Indonesian professional photojournalists, led by Ulet Ifansasti. This initiative is based on the belief that visuals, i.e., photography and multimedia, can speak volume. Photos can make an impact and drive changes. At a time when checking phones is the first thing we do in the morning, we believe visual language may offer a more strategic function to raise awareness of the climate crisis. iklimku. The focal point of iklimku is, therefore, the climate change stories.

For the beginning, iklimku will publish selected works, both from our key staffs and our colleagues aggregated from their personal website. Through these works, we want to provide visual information about climate change in Indonesia, to be used as learning materials for the public, especially for the future generation.

Slow and steady, we want to raise awareness about climate change in Indonesia and its impacts, both for today and in the future. We also seek to amplify collective anxiety to trigger our needs to break free from climate change.

In the long run, iklimku will partner with other media with similar passion for raising important issues. We also attempt to use strategic and effective channels and social media platforms that can intensify the resonance of this initiative. We hope our efforts may reach people’s hearts and raise their awareness of this issue.

Next, it’s our task to involve more parties in the development of iklimku. We will continue to carry out campaigns on climate change to strive to be a reliable source for everyone.