2022•03•23     Bonn, Germany

Photo: UNICEF / Fauzan Ijazah

Today UNU-EHS launches two new publications: The first, the Assessment of Hazards, Exposure and Vulnerability in Indonesia (HEVA) report, is a risk assessment across regions and provinces in Indonesia. The findings of this risk assessment then informed the second report, the Climate and Disaster Risk Analytics Tool for Adaptive Social Protection (CADRAT).

Around the world, growing impacts from climate change and disasters call for enhanced action to protect people’s lives and well-being. One promising approach to address this challenge is Adaptive Social Protection (ASP). ASP is about combining social protection, disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. In practice, this means, for example, that existing social protection programmes, such as health or unemployment insurance, are adapted to now also cover injuries, income losses and other impacts resulting from natural hazards and climate change. However, the risks that people face are diverse. Food insecurity that is induced by drought cannot necessarily be solved with the same measures that work to address injuries and damages resulting from storms or floods.

“There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and if ASP interventions are to succeed in building resilience, they must consider the specific risks, including local conditions and people’s needs, in the targeted location,” said Dominic Sett, one of the lead authors of the HEVA report. “Indonesia is actually one of the international pioneers of ASP, but even though ASP is an important part of the country’s development plan, more comprehensive assessments are needed to make policy decisions.”

This is what the HEVA report delivers. The scientists developed a new approach for cross-sectoral risk assessments and applied it throughout Indonesia. They focused on the drivers of risk, i.e. hazards, exposure and vulnerability, to identify which communities are most at risk and why. In Indonesia for example, Java and Bali are characterized by high hazard levels but comparatively low vulnerability, while Maluku faces moderate hazard levels but high exposure and vulnerability. This risk composition is important for the design of effective ASP solutions. Based on the assessment the report provides recommendations for policy makers, practitioners and researchers. The approach can serve as a blue-print for further country assessments.

The second publication, the Climate and Disaster Risk Analytics Tool for Adaptive Social Protection (CADRAT), explored the feasibility of a climate and disaster risk analytics tool for ASP. To do so it applied an existing framework, the Economics of Climate Adaptation (ECA), to Indonesia’s Nusa Tenggara region. ECA is a decision-making support tool that integrates climate vulnerability and risk assessment with economic impact studies to determine a portfolio of optimal adaptation measures for diverse climate risks.

The ECA tool has already been used by UNU-EHS researchers help communities in different parts of the world to identify which adaptation measures can make the biggest impact for them at the best cost-benefit ratio. For the new study the tool was applied to quantify non-monetary impacts of tropical storms in the context of ASP. Based on these insights the researchers have developed their new tool, CADRAT, with the aim to assess to what degree dimensions of social protection are affected. So rather than focusing on the tangible damage a storm can cause, for example by destroying infrastructure, the scientists focused on things such as access to health services, access to education and mobility. These factors are equally important to an affected region and understanding how they are impacted helps to identify bottlenecks and weak links for targeted policy making and adaptation measures.

Both HEVA and CADRAT benefitted from close collaboration with local stakeholders. “Without the support of the Ministry of National Development Planning Bappenas, the National Disaster Management Agency BNPB and other agencies in Indonesia, this project would not have been possible,” said Florian Waldschmidt, one of the lead authors of CADRAT. “The closer the collaboration with local stakeholders, experts and academia, the more precise results on risks and impacts can be generated. At the same time, close engagement and collaboration will ensure that HEVA and CADRAT will be applied by local and national stakeholders and thus support their efforts in building resilience.”

The insights from both publications will support Bappenas and the GIZ Indonesia’s Social Protection Programme in their efforts to implement ASP in Indonesia.

Link to HEVA report

Link to CADRAT report