Living with Natural Disasters: Resilience Must Be Year-Round

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - Indonesia, a country with vast natural wealth, is also accompanied by ubiquitous threats of natural disasters. Standing on pillars of fire and tectonic plates, and located on the equator, Indonesia faces natural disaster threats year-round. Apart from those from within the Earth’s crust, there are also those arising from the tectonic plates. Not only from below, the impacts of global warming also tell a disaster story. Its fertile soil is accompanied by the tremors caused by plate activity and volcanoes. Therefore, it is only proper that the government, both central and regional, should have extraordinary resilience in leading Indonesia. Not resilience that is ‘seasonal’ but year-round. This is what is expected by the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kementerian Dalam Negeri RI) to the heads of regional governments in Indonesia. What is meant by ‘seasonal resilience’ and how will the government respond to the challenges of natural disasters that threaten Indonesian territory at all times? Bima Arya explains that the ‘seasonal resilience’ referred to means that regional governments tend to neglect the potential disasters in their areas. This often happens when disasters strike; the affected regional budgets appear very unprepared, overwhelmed, and in the end they seek help from the central government. Therefore, one way for regional resilience in facing disasters not to be seasonal is to devise an adaptive budgeting system. “So it is already included in planning and budgeting; this is quite flexible to anticipate, but there is room that has been anticipated based on disaster-risk maps,” said Bima.