Climate Change, Food Insecurity, and National Defense in Archipelago Country: An Interlinked Challenges for Indonesia

Abstract

For archipelago countries that consist of thousands of islands like Indonesia, climate change is an imminent threat to the nation. The characteristic of an archipelagic country is adding different challenges to the context of food sufficiency for its people. Meanwhile, the Indonesian defense and security system, the Universal people’s defense and security system which is also known as “Sishankamrata”, mandated the concept of the unity of both military and non-military actors. Those conditions may lead to the overlap jurisdiction that affected the policies later. This study aimed to enhance and broaden the perspective for the use of the “security” term for climate change and food security in national defense. This study was done by collecting and summarizing relevant discourses and works in Indonesia that are within the scope of climate security to explain the interlinked aspect between food security as the main goal, climate change as the imminent threat, and national defense as the affected aspect. The results show that the interlinked between climate change, food insecurities, and national defense are majorly related to supply and food availability. As an archipelagic country like Indonesia which depends on agriculture and have rice supremacy over the region, these conditions could lead to food scarcity in some areas and increasing dependence on food from other islands. Climate change could worsen these conditions by affect agriculture production between islands.