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Indonesia could lose parts of 4,000 islands over the next 10 years as sea levels rise due to global warming, an official at the State Ministry for the Environment warned on Wednesday.

Henri Bustaman, deputy to the environment minister overseeing communication and people’s empowerment, said parts of these islands, roughly a quarter of the country’s total number of islands, could disappear beneath rising seas.

Henri cited research by the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) that found most of the threatened islands are in the eastern part of the country, including small islands that are part of the provinces of Maluku and West Nusa Tenggara.

Henri said that rising sea levels were inevitable and that the government needed to begin developing plans to respond to the crisis.

“What we need to do is change the way people live,” he said.

Henri said coastal residents needed to be educated about the dangers of rising sea levels.

He said the effort would require integrated action by concerned government institutions and regional administrations.

The environment ministry, Henri said, has introduced a program aimed at revitalizing coastal mangrove forests in an effort to protect islands from rising sea levels.

“Regional administrations must also make plans and start mapping out the local environment according to the conditions in each area,” he said.

Nirwono Joga, an environmental observer from Trisakti University, said that the mapping of small islands across Indonesia was important.

“The government must make a list of all the islands located within Indonesia,” Nirwono said. “Then we can work from there.”

He said regional administrations played the major role in climate change mitigation efforts, because they were more familiar with the needs and conditions of local areas.

“The central government should help them by providing technical assistance,” Nirwono said.

With up to 80 percent of Indonesia made up of coastal areas, he said the country badly needed a master mitigation plan before it lost more of its land to rising sea levels.