Rural livelihood resilience on multiple dimensions: a case study from selected coastal areas in Central Java

Abstract

Rural coastal areas in northern Central Java suffer from tidal flood caused by sea level rise and land subsidence. People not only lose their properties as tidal flood submerges houses and lands but many of their livelihoods become unsustainable. To understand the extent of tidal flood impact to livelihood of rural coastal communities and their livelihoods, this paper aims to measure the level of rural livelihood resilience through multiple dimensional analysis. Drawing from various sources including livelihood resilience index (LRI) and resilience radar, the four dimensions that consist of social, economic, environment, and physical-infrastructure are adapted to express the level of livelihood resilience in the study area. The results indicate the tidal flood severity of two study areas caused different composition of contributing dimensions to livelihood resilience even though the score values showing insignificant gap. The findings also acknowledged that environment dimension is an important factor for building livelihood resilience for coastal community regardless of the disaster exposure. It comes as effect of coastal community inclination to depend their livelihood on the land resource and its supporting ecosystem.