Addressing the Impact of Climate Change in Indonesian Slums

Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Urban and Regional Development Institute (URDI) today announced a partnership to address the potentially dire effects that climate change will have on the poorest people in Indonesia’s cities. Mercy Corps received $525,000 to run the twelve-month Indonesian Cities Project, which will help city dwellers withstand, prepare for and recover from the impacts of climate change The project is part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN),

Mercy Corps will work in five cities – Bandung, Palembang, Blitar, Semarang and Bandar Lampung – that are significantly impacted by global warming. Negative effects include increased flooding, lack of clean water, and the spread of diseases like Dengue fever. With URDI as an advisor, Mercy Corps will work with government entities, including the Indonesian Ministry of the Environment, university and research institutions, local non-governmental organizations and others to assess the vulnerability of these cities to climate change, and test risk reduction strategies.

“Climate change is expected to hit impoverished communities the hardest, but these people have the fewest resources to deal with it,” says Mercy Corps Indonesia Country Director Sean Granville-Ross. “With the funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and our expertise in disaster risk reduction and response, Mercy Corps will help Indonesians anticipate and address the affects climate change will have on their communities.”

According to the United Nations, the global urban population is predicted to skyrocket from 3.2 billion to 4.9 billion in the next 30 years, exacerbating climate change affects in cities around the world.

“Communities around the world need better tools, techniques, and strategies to address the risks of climate change,” said Ashvin Dayal, Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation in Asia. “We may not be able to reverse all of the impacts that global warming has already had, but we hope this partnership with Mercy Corps and URDI will play a catalytic role in building the capacity of the institutions and communities in Indonesian cities in order to cope with and successfully adapt to these impacts.”

New, robust models of how to prepare for withstand and recover from the predicted impacts of climate change will be developed through the Indonesian Cities Project. The partners aim to replicate these models in other urban areas in the region though the ACCCRN network by 2012.