The fast-growing Indonesian economy has triggered tremendous urbanization, which is often unsustainable and comes with high ecological tolls and effects for household water resources, especially in and around the poorer neighbourhoods. Besides rapid urbanisation, climate change has further impacted the wellbeing of people in the slums, through floods and drought, as they are often located close to rivers or coastal areas at the outskirts of the city.
Slums are often neglected or undervalued by policy and decision-makers in national and regional plans, remaining blind spots on most maps. When they do come into focus, plans and policies are usually based on comprehensive technical approaches that use ecological processes to achieve sustainability.
Therefore, finding sustainable solutions to rise to the water challenge requires active engagement with the people affected by policy decisions and other stakeholders who must live with, and participate in, the implementation of potential solutions.
This project aims to develop an inclusive governance roadmap to transform Indonesian cities towards social-ecological resilience in the face of water-related disasters. We focus on studying social-ecological interactions in slum areas in three different locations in Indonesia: Pontianak, Manado and Bima. Together, these represent most of the key social and water challenges that Indonesian cities face.
As such, we build a model incorporating people and water. The results will help develop a generic transformative change strategy to include: an (e-)learning programme, training for trainers, and workshops, as well as a roadmap to develop an inclusive governance plan that integrates both societal and technical solutions.
This can provide guidance for more inclusive governance to co-create resilient Indonesian slums. It also envisions the RISE to the water challenge applying across whole urban regions, both old, new and those still in the making, such as the proposed new Indonesian capital.
