Palembang has reached a new milestone; they have been processing the final draft of the Climate Change Adaption Plan, with support from CCROM under IUC Asia framework. The document includes a vulnerability and climate risk assessment, identified goals and objectives, and adaptation strategies. On 14 October, a meeting with city stakeholders was arranged to review the document, focusing on the assessment result and adaptation goal.
The impact of climate change may threaten the coastal, water, agriculture, and health sectors of the province. The multiple past climate hazards are reported occurred in Palembang, including floods, forest fire, high wind, and landslide,
Ardiansyah, a representative from CCROM, refreshed participants a four-step process to develop climate change resilience planning, namely 1) Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) 2) identify the location priority 3) tagging process – identification and selection of existing programs and actions that do not only solve urban development issues but also help combat the negative impacts of climate change 4) review the identifies program and actions. CRVA was one of the important steps; the climate risk result would lead to the area that requires the most attention (step 2), while the vulnerability assessment result would identify the adaption actions to target the most vulnerable populations (step 3). The Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry introduced SIDIK, an online platform that calculates and maps out cities’ vulnerability and climate risk levels. SIDIK scrutinized its assessment down to the smallest unit of a city – villages – which equips city officials to prioritize which particular villages need immediate actions. The CRVA for Palembang City covered 107 villages across the whole city.
Village climate risk level is determined based on the possibility for extreme climate (threat) to occur and the village vulnerability level using a risk matrix. A village with a very high vulnerability level and climate hazard exposure (both future and current climate hazard) will have a very high climate risk. The next step is to define the urgency level for the location by evaluating the current and future climate risks. The final one brings to the assessment, which requires investigation of whether the identified climate hazard has occurred in each village for every urgency level. This will result in the level of priority locations based on the following classification:
- Level I – high priority: it will be assigned to the villages with a high to very high urgency level, and at least a climate hazard occurred in the past.
- Level II- moderately high priority: it will be assigned to the villages with medium to very low urgency level, and at least a climate hazard occurred in the past
- Level III- moderately low priority: it will be assigned to the villages with a high to very high urgency level, and none of the climate hazards occurred in the past.
- Level IV- low priority: it will be assigned to the villages with medium to very low urgency level, and none of the climate hazards occurred in the past.
The assessment has conveyed that Palembang City is dominated by Level-III Priority, with 62 villages. About 8 and 3 villages are categorized as Level-I Priority and Level-II Priority, respectively
The vulnerability assessment revealed that the main contributing factors to the Level-I and Level-II Priority including the lack of infrastructure (sanitation and garbage facilities, traditional market and urban green space), the decreased number of rice paddy area, the higher number of poverty household, and the less effort of river normalization.
The meeting reviewed the adaptation target suggested by CCROM; those were related to reducing the village vulnerability and vulnerable population groups.
The outcome of the meeting agreed that if the implementation of development does not consider the villages’ vulnerability to potential climate change impacts, there would be increases in climate risk levels and the villages’ vulnerability. Adaptation plans and actions should consider the current and future climate risk levels, be targeted to reduce the vulnerability and prioritize Level I villages for implementation.
