THE QUOTIDIAN ANTHROPOCENE: RECONFIGURING ENVIRONMENTS IN

URBANIZING ASIA
(Singapore, 16 17 October 2014)

Social-Ecological Resillience for Ecosystem Management: the Development of

Adaptive Co-management of a Wetlands in Palembang
Dodon Yamin1 and Saut Sagala2
1

Resilence Develoment Initiative (RDI), Indonesia/ http://rdi.or.id

2
Institute Technology of Bandung, Indonesia
Email: dodon.yamin@rdi.or.id

ABSTRACT
Palembang is one of the main cities in Indonesia that underwent rapid urbanization. It became the center of social
and economy of South Sumatra region. As the result, there has been a high demand of land use conversion from
wetlands into residential area and socio-economic venues. The wetlands which originated to be 80% of the land
area in 1919 have now become 37% in 2010. As the result the area lost its original function, such as: water
retention and filtration, habitat containing biodiversity, flood retention, and local climate stabilizer. Consequently,
incidents of flood and climate change became inevitable.Flooding data showed that the trend of flooding in the city
has increased from 18 events in 2007 to 46 events in 2012. The rise in numbers of flood forms direct adaptation
from society socially and ecologically. The study aims to assess how social-ecological resilience faces the
phenomenon of change in swamp land use. Data collection was conducted by in depth interview to 20 households,
as well as observation to 626 families. Analysis were performed with a model of spatial correlation and content
analysis to obtain information related to changes in wetlands, flood events and changes in social-ecological
resilience of communities. This study demonstrates that the flood particularly exacerbates the economy of lowincome society. Moreover, the adaptation still largely focus on structural as elevating homes, making dams and
storing other valuables, while the non-structural adaptation still focus on how to maintain the preparedness of
emergency funds. Finally, it concludes that preparedness of the society should be supported by both structural and
non-structural policies from the government so that the risk of flood can be comprehensively reduced.
Keywords : Adaptation, Communities, Flood, Social-ecological, Wetlands,

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dodon Yamin is a researcher at Resilience Development Initiative (RDI). Authors research interests include
Environmental Change, Climate Adaptation Change, Disaster Risk Reduction and insurance. The author has
several activities, such as writing a chapter of international book entitled Social Protection, Disaster Risk
Reduction and Sustainable Community Resilience: Evidences from Rural Areas in Indonesia, which will be
publiched in Routledge (2015) dan Fostering Community Preparedness to Wildfire: Experiences from Indonesia "
that will come up in Elvesier (2014). Furthermore, some of his works have been published as chapters of the book
regarding land use change and urban resilience in the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) Publication, as well as
journal articles about community awareness for flood disasters in West Java, published in Journal of Civil
Engineering ITB. Until now, he has been participated in International conferences in several countries. Currently,
the author is taking master degree in Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction at Bandung Institute
of Technology (ITB).

Draft Copy Not to be Quoted Without Permission from the Author