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Global warming threatens Borobudur temple
Yogyakarta: Like any
historical monument, Indonesia’s magnificent Borobudur temple in
central Java has suffered the ravages of time.
But now conservationists fear the world’s biggest Buddhist
temple, topped with stupas and decorated with hundreds of
reliefs depicting Buddhist thought and the life of Buddha, faces
a new threat – climate change.
As global temperatures rise and rainfall patterns change, the
dark stone temple, which dates from the 9th century, could
deteriorate faster than normal, Marsis Sutopo, head of the
Borobudur Heritage Conservation Institute, said.
“We are racing against the weather,” Sutopo said.
“Changing climate will have an impact on temple conservation
efforts.
“Warmer temperature could theoretically cause more fissures and
cracks in the stones,” he said, adding that acid rain has
already eroded many of the reliefs.
Although no direct link has been found between climate change
and the damage to Borobudur, Sutopo said a two-year study by
Italian stone expert Costantino Meucci showed that higher
precipitation is affecting the temple’s volcanic stone.
“Humidity allows moss and algae to grow on the stones already
more than 1,000 years old. The stones have been exposed to the
heat and humidity for so long, they have reached a critical
point where deterioration is going to happen faster,” he said.
“We suspect changing climate will make it happen faster.”
Borobudur, near Java’s ancient royal capital Yogyakarta, dates
back to around 800 AD, long before Islam became the dominant
religion in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
It represents a Buddhist view of the universe, comprising a
series of square and circular terraces that allow visitors to
move upward from the everyday world to a large bell-shaped stupa
representing nirvana.
Steep stairways lead to the wide-open terraces, where
stone-lattice stupas contain statues of Buddha overlooking the
tropical green plain and its distant volcanoes.
The monument was neglected and abandoned for almost a thousand
years before it was rediscovered beneath volcanic ash and jungle
in the 1800s when a survey team investigated talk of a great
ruin in central Java.
Borobudur’s conservation began during Dutch colonial times
thanks to the efforts of a Dutch
scientist, Van Erp, between 1907 and 1911.
But the most extensive and complex restoration work took place
between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, and involved taking out
each of the stones for cleaning and then reassembling them in
the original layout.
Waterproof layers and channels were also installed inside to
protect the temple’s reliefs from rainwater.
Conservationists say Borobudur is just one of many world
heritage sites, including the Tibetan monasteries in the
Himalayas and the cultural monuments of Greece, that are
threatened by global warming, although it isn’t necessarily
endangered by the effects of climate change.
“One of the big problems is the deterioration of the stones,
much exacerbated by early conservation efforts. Warming and
humidity changes have added to the fungus,” Richard Engelhardt,
a Bangkok-based regional adviser at Unesco for culture in Asia
and the Pacific, said.
Although Borobudur was not affected by the 2006 earthquake in
Yogyakarta which killed over 5,000 people, conservationists say
the increasing frequency of earthquakes is also a challenge.
“The stones on the reliefs have not been affixed to the basic
structure, so in case of a quake they could fall apart,” Sutopo
said. “Indonesia is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. In the
long run, quakes could destabilise the temple structure.” –
Reuters
 
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