Climate adaptation to Multi-Hazard climate related risks in ten Indonesian Cities: Ambitions and challenges

Indonesian coastal cities are faced with a double imperative to urbanize quickly and to adapt to climate-related disasters. These disasters include droughts, storms, regular floods, tidal waves, and water pollution. This article investigates how ten small- and medium-sized coastal cities in Indonesia are developing resilience strategies to cope with disaster risks. It approaches their level of exposure, the current impacts of climate change, and the existing, local resilience strategies or response. It identifies key discussion points related to the implementation and the feasibility of these strategies. We argue in this article that the priorities are severalfold, and that local governments are increasingly faced with trade-offs when selecting specific interventions and neighborhoods or districts to prioritize to the detriment of others. The current coping strategies seem insufficient to reduce, respond to, and recover from climate-related impacts as well as address the question of vulnerabilities. The population in the coastal areas and in informal settlements, mainly the poor population, is more directly exposed to these climate-related hazards. The local research highlights the difficulties of multi-stakeholder cooperation, the inevitable trade-offs or difficult choices, and the lack of adequate instruments in climate adaptation. Finally, this article calls for more specific timely research on climate adaptation in cities.