PROMOTING SISTER CITY CONCEPT FOR SUSTAINABLE AND RESILIENT CITIES: INDONESIAN CITIES IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Abstract

Indonesia has many large cities such as Jakarta, Bandung, Medan, Surabaya and Balikpapan with a more dynamic trend of urbanization, increasing economic growth and activity, rapid population growth, and dense populations. As a result, complex activities of people in urban areas need space and this leads to environmental degradation, such as deforestation practices and poorly constructed houses in the ftood plain. To prevent this in the future, developing country like Indonesia need benchmarking from developed countries. This study used qualitative approach that aims to exploration and to identify the scope of the twin cities policy cooperation and climate change adaptation concepts at the legal level and identifying the relationship between them. So far, the construction of inter-city usually has a partnership with cities abroad, including the sister city concept. Sister city practice could certainly be used by the widest modeled cities in Indonesia in the good practice development. Jakarta and Bandung (Indonesia)’s regional cooperation should not only focus on its economic achievements but also reflect on the other aspects of domestic and international affairs that do not necessarily require huge reserves to address. While there remain obstacles to regional cooperation, the culture of pragmatism within Indonesia has the potential to allow the region to effectively cooperate on most issues, especially addressing climate change, the effects of which all countries are experiencing. Sister city can adopt to resilience characteristics of the sister city if the other cities have similar threat and perhaps carry out similar approaches.