Building adaptive capacity through (trans)local social capital: Sea level rise and resilience of coastal communities in growing Indonesian cities

Abstract

Indonesia’s low-lying urban coastal areas are among the world’s regions most affected by negative environmental changes. Major risks include fluvial and rain floods, tidal inundation, tsunamis, saltwater intrusion and shoreline change as well as anthropogenic hazards such as land subsidence and water pollution. The ongoing urbanization, combined with the predicted effects of climate change, will increase the exposure of cities towards coastal hazards in the coming decades. Coastal communities are particularly vulnerable to the potential impacts of these hazards. Accordingly, the development of adequate and comprehensive adaptation strategies is pivotal in the Indonesian urban context.

Informal social support and community-led responses to cope with increasing coastal hazards are expected to substantially complement governmental initiatives. Coastal communities in the Global South rely on social capital to cope with and adapt to environmental change and disaster events. However, household response strategies and community-led initiatives often remain overlooked by decision-makers and government officials, resulting in inadequate coastal adaptation plans and maladaptive outcomes for the local population. Hence, failing to recognize and understand social structures within communities can jeopardize the success of top-down efforts as well as potentially harm community networks that constitute a vital pillar of their adaptive capacity. While existing hazard studies show the positive influence of (trans)local social capital for affected communities, it remains unclear how translocal social capital is activated, utilized, and translated over spatial and socio-cultural distances to improve adaptive responses of households and communities.

To address this question, we examine the characteristics and determinants of (trans)local responses to coastal hazards of affected communities in the two rapidly growing second-tier cities Denpasar on Bali and Padang in West Sumatra. The aim of this research is to show how the structure and dynamics of social networks are related to the collective responses of communities to coastal hazards. We apply a mixed-methods approach, combining the results of qualitative interviews and quantitative household surveys. Using the example of collective responses to coastal hazards in different socio-cultural contexts, we aim to draw more general conclusions about the costs and benefits associated with translocal social capital in the context of responding to natural hazards and environmental change in the Global South. As a result, factors in ameliorating the implementation of collective bottom-up initiatives with top-down hazard management can be identified.