STOCKHOLM WORLD WATER WEEK 2011

Hi,

In the busy year of 2011, I was invited by Stockholm World Water Week to present my paper on "Kelurahan Empowerment in Climate Change Adaptation" in Stockholm, Sweden. I was honored with fellowship by The Stockholm Water Council.

AUTHOR
Bob Eko Kurniawan is a professional with various expertise ranged from urban planning to community development. I have 15 years of working experience with national agency for housing and settlement in Indonesia as Corporate Program and Evaluation Manager. Our mission as government long arm in housing sector is focused on providing adequate and affordable housing for low income group in Indonesia. The housing projects are spread all over the archipelago. After that, he had the opportunity to work for several years with international mining giant company as Community Relation Development Superintendent. This job gives him the opportunity to won prestigious award from the Indonesian Ministry of Mining & Energy in 2008.  In his current role as Urban Director for Mercy Corps in Indonesia, I manage to oversee successful projects related to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

PAPER PRESENTATION ON:
BALANCE BETWEEN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND SUPPORTING FACILITATION ROLES OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO REDUCE THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE
STOCKHOLM WORLD WATER WEEK 2011

KEYWORDS: CLIMATE CHANGE, COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT, CLIMATE RESILIENCE CITIES, FLOOD MANAGEMENT, COMMUNITY ACTION PLAN

INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this abstract is to give clear understanding of community approach in climate change adaptation and utilizing the government support. Current phenomenon in climate change has given great impacts towards urban communities all over the world. Climate variability increase and manifest itself in forms of unpredictable rainfalls pattern, raising temperature, rising sea-levels, and increased flooding. Efforts had been initiated and implemented to reduce the green house effects and mitigate future rise in temperature, but still we are witnessing relatively less attention from the authority.
The urban poor are among the most vulnerable group that in the face of climate changes, as they are incapable to adapt the consequences of the impacts. Those who lived in Asian cities such as Jakarta (Indonesia) are especially susceptible to unpredictable environmental changes, particularly because these cities are expected to be responsible for more than 60% of global population growth in the next 30 years. The rapid growths of urban population in these cities are in contradiction with the availability of resource and infrastructures in order to cope with compounding challenges of urbanization, poverty and environmental degradation.
Much of the problems in these cities such as Jakarta are on the incapability of managing the risk on the preventive side in terms of planning, budgeting and implementation from the local authorities as well as the communities. Limited or inadequate knowledge in environment preservation and climate change adaptation or risk mitigation added by uncoordinated cross sector work relationship, hampered the capability of the city to overcome the climate change challenges. Other possibility to address this is from private sector as Urban Climate Change Resilience Building (UCCRB)  suggest. Unfortunately, the role of private sector in this case is still limited and incidental since their involvement usually based on event and business interest.
A proper technical assistance is in need to improve the capacity and capability of the local authority and its communities in adapting with the climate change. The imbalance of knowledge in climate adaptation between local government and communities needs to be addressed. Current tendency in top-down planning must also address bottom-up in order to capture the real need of the local community in their particular habitat. Therefore, a comprehensive action plan should be introduced to the community living in urban poor settlement within disaster prone areas.

ANALYSIS
Jakarta as the capital city of Indonesia is one of the densest city in Asia. Divided into five municipalities and one administrative regency (Central, North, East, West, South Jakarta and Kepulauan Seribu Regency), total of the area is 661.52 km2 with around 35 km of coastal area in the north. With various areas under sea-level of 3 up to 7 meters; the north part of Jakarta is practically prone to flood by sea-level rise. The eastern part of the city which consisting of several large rivers, also prone to flooding caused by the upstream flows.
To overcome this, the government of Jakarta had done some significant efforts such as dredging the river floor and dams, constructions of pump house in flood prone areas including mobile pumps, large canal construction on east and west side of the city, and socializing through clean campaign in solid waste management to the people. But all of this effort still doesn’t answer the challenge of climate change adaptation since it calls for more comprehensive way of tackling the urgency ahead.
The community in urban poor context nowadays has the opportunity and capacity to manage themselves to be more self-sufficient. The fact that the local government staff limited knowledge on some urban technical development aspects and management, lack of knowledge from the community in project management presents the need to bridge the gap and to accompany the knowledge transition.
 A program for climate adaptation in community context is called for. In concept, the program is addressing the challenge to create a balance between community engagement and government role in supporting the facility. The main concern of the program is how to educate the community and local government officer in the sub district to be able to self-sustain when it comes to climate change adaptation. New ideas and innovations will likely be introduced in the program and the aim is that both the community and local government official could produce and fully utilize the Local Resilience Action Plan (LRAP). The LRAP will provide a framework to establish a pragmatic and comprehensive action plan for the community to better manage DRR in the short term, and climate change ad