Volcanoes, Climate Change, and the Limits of State Capacity in Indonesia

A question of how much disruption a state can absorb before its institutions, infrastructure, and economy begin to fail.

Editor – Southeast Asia Analyst

On 4 September 2026, the Anak Krakatau volcano in the Sunda Strait entered a prolonged eruptive episode that lasted around 25 hours. Indonesia’s Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) kept the occurrence at Alert Level III, warning that further eruptions are possible. Simultaneously, Indonesia’s meteorological agency, BMKG, continued monitoring volcanic ash, aviation conditions, and the surrounding sea around the clock. So far, this is a story of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia being monitored and managed. But it raised a much bigger question: What happens when Indonesia has to manage not one disaster, but several overlapping risks at the same time?

The question really matters as Indonesia’s vulnerabilities are not defined by volcanoes alone. Floods, landslides, droughts, forest fires, extreme weather, and rising exposure to climate-related hazards are becoming part of the country’s wider risk environment. Volcanic eruptions are primarily driven by Indonesia’s tectonic setting, not by climate change. Yet climate change can change the conditions in which disasters occur, adding new pressures to infrastructure, public services, food systems and government institutions. The challenge, therefore, is not simply whether the Indonesian state can respond to an eruption, but whether the state has enough capacity and resilience to absorb a series of increasingly complex and overlapping crises without allowing a local hazard to become a national disruption.

Anak Krakatau offers an important starting point, not because it necessarily signals a larger eruption ahead, but because it provides a real-time test of how Indonesia’s institutions manage uncertainty, coordinate across agencies, and protect a society that is becoming increasingly exposed to multiple forms of risk. A volcanic eruption is usually understood as a local disaster. The volcano is in one place, the danger zone is mapped, and authorities can establish exclusion areas and evacuation procedures. Indonesia has developed considerable expertise in doing precisely this. However, the problem begins when the consequences travel further than the volcano itself.

The latest Anak Krakatau eruption provides an early example. On 6 September, BMKG reported two clusters of volcanic ash extending across Banten, DKI Jakarta, West Java, and toward Bengkulu provinces. The agency issued aviation weather warnings, since the beginning of the eruption. BMKG has also continued 24-hour monitoring of the atmosphere, aviation conditions, and the sea around the Sunda Strait. The ash clouds disrupted aviation. stranded passengers, delayed cargo, and affected tourism. Prolonged disruptions placed pressure on businesses, schools, and essential services. Bringing up a question on whether authorities can prevent a chain of relatively manageable disruptions from becoming a wider crisis.

The eruption is a reminder that disaster resilience is ultimately a question of how much disruption a state can absorb before its institutions, infrastructure, and economy begin to fail. And that is a much larger question than what happens inside the three-kilometer exclusion zone around a volcano.

Indonesia is already experiencing changing climate conditions that affect rainfall, drought, extreme heat, flooding, and coastal risks. The World Bank projects that intense rainfall events and flash floods will increase, while changing rainfall patterns will create additional pressure on agriculture, water resources, and infrastructure. In other words, Indonesia’s disaster problem is worsening. The government must maintain its capacity to monitor and respond to geological hazards while also adapting to a changing climate. This then creates a more difficult test of state capacity.

Indonesia does not lack institutions for disaster management. At the national level, BNPB coordinates disaster management, while institutions such as BMKG and the Geological Agency provide critical hazard information. Local governments operate through BPBDs, while emergency responses also depend on the police, military, search-and-rescue agencies, health services, and infrastructure operators. The problem here, therefore, is not as simple as institutional absence. It is whether these institutions can function and coordinate when a crisis crosses administrative and sectoral boundaries.

A volcanic eruption exposes this challenge unusually well. The volcano itself may be monitored by geological authorities, but the consequences can quickly become the responsibility of aviation regulators, airports, local governments, health and school authorities. When volcanic ash moves across several provinces, there is no longer a purely “volcanic” response.

A disaster can overwhelm a government not because it lacks money in absolute terms, but because money is not available quickly enough, at the right level, and for the right purpose. Emergency response requires immediate liquidity, while recovery and reconstruction require resources and funds for months or years. The broader ASEAN experience illustrates the problem. The World Bank notes that disasters across ASEAN create a substantial fiscal burden and that governments often face difficulties securing adequate and timely financing for early recovery. It recommends stronger risk information, national and subnational disaster-financing strategies, rapid-disbursement funds, and greater regional cooperation.

This begs the questions, can emergency agencies continue to operate when several provinces are affected by different hazards? Can local governments access financing before damage becomes a humanitarian problem? Can critical infrastructure continue functioning when transport networks are disrupted? Can the national government coordinate without creating delays between agencies? These are not hypothetical questions for a country as geographically dispersed as Indonesia.

Anak Krakatau’s latest activity does not mean that Indonesia is heading toward another 1883-scale catastrophe. Nor does the simultaneous activity of several Indonesian volcanoes provide evidence that a larger regional eruption is imminent. But focusing only on whether the next eruption will be bigger risks missing the more important question. Indonesia is entering an era in which disaster risk is increasingly complex. Geological hazards remain a permanent feature of the country’s geography, while climate change is adding new pressures through changing rainfall patterns, extreme weather, drought, flooding and coastal risks. These hazards do not necessarily share the same physical cause, but they can compete for the same infrastructure, public finances and government capacity.

The real measure is whether the state can continue functioning when several disruptions occur at once. That then requires Indonesia to move beyond a response-oriented model toward a stronger resilience model: better integration of risk information between agencies, stronger coordination between national and local governments, more resilient critical infrastructure, faster access to disaster financing, and contingency planning that considers multiple hazards occurring simultaneously. It also requires a shift in how disaster preparedness is understood. Early warning is essential, but a warning has limited value if institutions cannot translate it into timely action. Monitoring technology is important, but technology alone cannot compensate for weak coordination. And emergency funding matters, but resilience also depends on whether communities and essential services can continue operating after the initial shocks.

Mochammad Jose Akmal is a Political Science and Government graduate from Universitas Diponegoro and a Program and Research Associate at the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) Climate Unit. His interests span economic policy, strategic industries, climate geopolitics, international affairs, and Indonesia’s economic and foreign policy.