Local responses in adapting to adaptation: Climate change adaptation in Indonesia

Abstract

Climate change has become the defining issue of human development for development agencies, with adaptation programming rapidly being designed and funded under designated climate change adaptation finance. As international climate change commitments progressively prioritise adaptation, climate change adaptive capacity and resilience-enhancing activities are increasingly being directed toward addressing adaptation needs. How this adaptation programming is designed and implemented, positions the experiences that local communities have with climate adaptation development interventions. Despite how wide-reaching adaptation needs and programming are globally, there has been limited attention given to understanding the local-level experiences of the translation of international adaptation policy and finance into adaptation interventions directed at instilling adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change. Less attention has been given to the rendering of adaptation interventions in Indonesia targeted toward building adaptive capacity to local community or village scales and the alterations to local resource governance in coastal and island communities. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to provide an understanding of the interactions between locally-targeted adaptation interventions and local community resource governance within international aid and development settings, and the ways in which the two mutually alter and are altered by each other. The thesis questions the divergent interpretations between the climate change adaptation discourse and conceptual underpinnings articulated into programmes of adaptation in Indonesia, with the lived experiences of adaptation activities' intended beneficiaries. To do so, this thesis draws on critical development perspectives to broadly question the implications of development interventions on local resource governance in adaptation programmes. Joining the critical development discourse with adaptation frameworks, this thesis presents findings from two case studies in Maluku and Java. These case studies were on adaptation programmes implemented nationally throughout Indonesia by international donor agencies, government and non-government organisations as part of both Indonesia's and donor-country commitments and priorities on adaptation. The case studies provide the experiences of programme implementers and participant communities in two key adaptation projects implemented at the village level as part of broader nation-wide programming. Show more