Earth Today | Fighting rising seas, sinking lands

WHEN THE Adaptation Fund and co-host Kemitraan, the fund’s national implementing partner in Indonesia, brought together local government leaders and 20 of its national implementing entities from across the globe to meet in Central Java for a knowledge exchange and visit to an AF-funded project in Pekalongan City in June, the visible impacts of sea level rise were jaw-dropping.

“With the sea rising an average of 3-5 cm a year due to climate change, combined with the challenge of sinking land (another 11 cm a year) due to groundwater extraction, more than a third of Pekalongan City in Central Java, Indonesia has been flooded since 2009,” said a press release from the AF.

“Tightly fit homes have resorted to packing sand to raise their floors up out of the flood zone, making their already small living spaces tighter as they creep slowly toward the ceiling. In an even starker sight, the sea has surrounded an ageing crematorium in a remaining spit of beach as waves continue to encroach past a fading line of soldierly but battered mangroves,” it added.

Once thriving rice paddies that supported the traditional food staple and flourishing jasmine fields have disappeared under the ocean, forcing local farmers to first try raising fish in enclosed ponds which, in turn, became flooded. Now they are resorting to line and boat fishing.

As many inland ponds become submerged, silvofishery and aquaculture farms have also cropped up to try to gradually adapt various species to the saltwater intrusions happening across the city.

“This is a really good example of the impact of climate change …” said Dr Laode MSyarif, executive director of Kemitraan (short for the Partnership for Governance Reform) in the release.

The main destination of the visit, the nearly US$6 million AF-funded project being implemented by Kemitraan in Pekalongan, is trying to turn these challenges into tangible actions while creating new livelihoods.

Using a ‘3-S approach’, the project lives by the principles of Safekeeping, Surviving, and Sustaining, and has a mix of technical and nature-based components.

It is constructing large wave deflection berms made of concrete and rock spaced apart offshore to create natural breakwaters and restore beach sediment, combined with mangrove planting and monitoring (implemented with help from local youth groups).

Kemitraan hopes to start with two berms and eventually expand to five and save what is left of the coast and restore space for a mangrove ecotourism centre.

The project also utilises many novel approaches, such as applying natural resources like thick bamboo poles to place mangrove plants high up within the poles, so they aren’t washed away in rising tides and floods. Side cut-outs are made for their roots to grow outward.

“We will not only plant the mangroves, but we are actually strengthening them with bamboo poles so it will withstand the current. We try. It’s a new way,” Syarif noted.

The enormity of the visible sea level rise incursions in Pekalongan City and the innovations being applied to adapt seems to have left a lasting impact on attendees, who took part in the visit as part of AF’s 4th Country Exchange to further its community of practice of NIEs by sharing best practices and lessons learned in countries implementing projects.

The exchange included a few days of workshops in Semarang, followed by the visit to the project in Pekalongan.

“I am left really impacted how that each year the water level is rising more than 10 cm, it is critical,” said Pamela Reyes, an innovation and strategic management specialist at Profonanpe, AF’s accredited NIE in Peru.

“Climate change affects us all. It seems to be a great opportunity to be able to see how these distinct countries in distinct contexts come with their own strategies and in some cases can be very similar but also how to adapt in particular circumstances and how we manage the projects to obtain the best results,” Reyes added.