Building a transformative adaptation: Comparing municipal government’ and community’s initiatives on minimizing the risk of coastal inundation in Pekalongan

Abstract

In 2006, coastal inundation was firstly reported to start entering community’s agriculture land in Northern part of Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia. The exposure covered most of paddy fields and fishponds. The disturbance has become bigger, when the exposure of coastal inundation has started to cover some part of settlement areas in 2010. Increasing salinity has prevented farmers to grow paddy cultivation and has forced them to find a new way for living. Pekalongan Municipal Government prepared Pekalongan City’s Resilience Strategy (PCRS) in 2010 in cooperation with PAKLIM-GIZ, and it involved significant and meaningful local stakeholders’ participation process. One of the concerning strategies was to minimize the risk of coastal inundation. In terms of PCRS implementation, observed local community has different planning interpretation in comparison to the municipal government. This paper aims to evaluate the implementation of PCRS by comparing the municipal government’ and community’s initiatives - either in the stage of planning or/and implementation - from a transformative adaptation perspective. Data for this study was collected through interviews with several key informants, who were selected by purposive sampling method. These key informants consist of Pekalongan Municipal Government Agencies’ members and local community figures in Northern Pekalongan Sub-district. This research reveals a double development standard from the side of municipal government, when it comes to prioritize both the economy and the environment. However, the local community prefers to choose a new livelihood, which provides them not just economic security, but also social and ecological benefits.