Kelurahan/Sub District Empowerment Initiatives in Climate Change Adaptation

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 adaptation in the long term.

*) This abstract is presented during 2011 World Water Week in Stockholm.