Farmers’ Disaster Mitigation Strategies in Indonesia
2021 年 9 巻 p. 178-194
詳細
2021 年 9 巻 p. 178-194
Indonesia experiences various disasters that affect human life in the economic and social aspects. Those disasters also affect the agriculture sector, and farmers have to face destroyed land and crop loss. The lives of farmers become more vulnerable. This paper presents the various disasters in Indonesia that affect agriculture, how the farmers’ lives get affected, and how the farmers cope with the impacts of the disasters with various mitigation strategies. Management of disaster risk reduction is being conducted by farmers with their local wisdom such as using predicting climate change with pranata mangsa in Java, and applying pikukuh for earthquake resistant house construction in Badduy Tribe. It is supported by the relevant stakeholders that, time by time, gets more support with advanced sciences. Farmers do have their own ways to cope with disasters, but other parties’ involvement is needed to make disaster risk reduction management more effective such as through education or direct and indirect aids. Farmers cannot work along for the disaster mitigation, therefore good inter stakeholder coordination is needed.
Disasters are not expected by all people worldwide, and natural disasters are often out of human control [1]. The disasters’ impacts vary depending on the type, degree, and people preparedness [2]. The term of disaster is divided into two: natural disaster and man-made disaster. Earthquakes, volcano eruptions, floods and or tsunami, landslides, and forest fires are examples of natural disasters. Meanwhile, man-made disasters include explosions, chemical pollutions, transportation accidents, etc. [3–5]. Forest fires, floods, and landslides are sometimes associated with human activities that triggered those disasters [6]. All areas around the world are facing the same fate, which is hit by disaster. However, the types and degrees of disaster are different. For example, Japan is known for earthquakes and tsunamis, and Indonesia with volcano eruption, and others [7]. Additionally, climate change that leads to drought or uneven rainfall is also assumed as one of the disasters caused by human activities [8].
Impacts of disasters are felt striking many sectors such as infrastructure, economic, livelihood, social etc. The main sector affected by disaster and triggers a domino effect is infrastructure, such as road, bridge, and other vital transportation mediums. When this sector is destroyed by disaster, another sector will get impacted [9]. The country that relies on its economic driver in the agriculture sector will have a vulnerable situation due to the agriculture sector becoming the one that gets impacted from disaster [10].
Indonesia is indeed one of the countries that are frequently hit by various disasters, and is a country depending much on agriculture. As the sector that becomes livelihood for many people, agriculture can lead to a crisis on farmers’ lives when this sector is hit by disaster [11,12]. Developing countries such as Indonesia in facing disaster is different from developed countries where they do have more advanced technology in predicting disasters occurrences. Accuracy in predicting the disaster is very important to minimise casualties, but natural disaster is something that difficult to be predicted [13,14]. The efforts to minimise pre, during, and post-disaster impacts are explained as disaster mitigation strategies [9,15,16].
Studies on disasters are abundant and are conducted to understand the impact and trend of disaster to formulate mitigation strategies [2,5,17–19]. However, studies on disasters that focus on the farmers’ disaster mitigation are still few. Therefore, this paper aims to understand this issue, and then it can be used for developing disaster mitigation strategies at the farmers level and or all related parties. In addition, as the main elements of agriculture, when agriculture is one of the vulnerable sectors from disaster [20], farmers are vulnerable too. Most of the farmers live in rural areas. So, understanding farmers’ lives and coping strategies in disaster-prone areas is interesting because it involves rural areas and local wisdom. Understanding the causes and impacts of the disaster is essential for mitigation efforts. It requires comprehensive, systematic, and multidisciplinary analysis that involving inter stakeholders [21–23].
Land subsidence, coastal inundations, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, and landslides are names of disasters that haunted Indonesia [18]. The disasters become more dangerous, and impact much in Indonesia because those often occur with different types and degrees. There are some factors why natural disasters frequently hit Indonesia. Indonesia is located in the so-called ring of fires, where many active volcanoes are still active, thus making this country often face volcanic eruption disasters [7,25]. In addition, other common disasters that Indonesia often face are earthquakes, floods or tsunami, landslide, and forest fires (Table 1). Indonesia is located in the continental plates, making it vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunami. These disasters, of course, affecting people’s life especially in the area where disasters occur [26]. Recently, disasters often occur that bring many impacts. Fig. 1 shows the impact of various disasters per 100,000 people from 2013–2019. It can be seen that 2018 has the highest impact on people’s life including death, injury, or displacement. Those impacts are coming with some following effects, including the loss of livelihood and the vital infrastructure.
Figure 1: Victims of disasters in Indonesia per 100,000 people (Source: [24])
Flood in Indonesia is common and hits all areas, including the cities and rurals. In the cities, flood is commonly caused by water that is not well absorbed due to reduced absorption surfaces. The main components affecting flood vulnerability are rainfall, temperature, and land use, while some additional factors include soil infiltration and slope [20]. Even if the water flow is large, if the absorption surface is available enough, the flood is less likely to occur. Another cause of flood is that the river is silting and full of trash, decreasing the river function [4]. Meanwhile, in rural areas, flood is caused by the large volume of rainfall and the decrease of the river function. Moreover, the flood that comes gradually is easier for evacuation than the flood that comes suddenly. One of areas that often get hit by flood is Jakarta, this capital city of Indonesia is having hard time every year due to floods. Economic and social condition become unstable due to the damage of transportation and infrastructure [49]. North Aceh, Tangerang, Bandung, Pekalongan, and Surakarta also become the area that facing floods, where economic sector become the first sector that most of people feel get negative impact from the floods [50–53]. For the rural area such as Pekalongan or North Aceh, agriculture get damage impact from the floods too. This disaster generally is associated with landslide, and this landslide also become a disaster that Indonesia often faces, but with a lesser impact than other disasters. This disaster occurs in the hilly area or the place that has a slope. Landslide often hit in the rainy season when the runoff makes the soil structure softer and fall become a landslide. This kind of disaster sometimes is deadly for the victim and certainly brings damage to the infrastructure.
Earthquakes, in addition, had been striking Indonesia from ancient times. However, it is felt more intense recently [35]. Padang, Yogyakarta, Nusa Tenggara Barat, are some area that got big hit of earthquake [21]. Aceh also got a big earthquake followed by a tsunami in 2004, where many people died. Earthquake impacts are being felt in economic where the goods distribution is disturbed or cut. The challenge of this disaster type is all kind of infrastructure such as road, settlements and public building are destroyed, and can affect other sectors [10,54].
Furthermore, as Indonesia located in the ring of fires, where many volcanoes are found in many areas of Indonesia, volcanic eruptions are frequently found in the country. Some volcanoes are not active, but some are active and frequently erupt, such as Mount Merapi in Java Island and Mount Sinabung in Sumatra Island [3,36]. Marfai [18] shows that in Central Java itself has 16 active volcano, where Mount Merapi is the most active, other volcano is Mount Semeru and Mount Kelud. Volcano eruption has several hazards such as lava, material explosion, and hot cloud. Residence and farm land lost become common impact from this disaster, those who displaced have faced big difficulties due to livelihood lost. However, on the other side, the ashes that covering the land after the eruption can bring fertility to the land [55]. Therefore, many people still live in surrounding areas even though the hazards are dangerous for both life and properties.
Indonesia is also the country that has the biggest rainforest in Asia or the world. This forest has rich biodiversity [56]. Unfortunately, due to some human activities, such as the expansion of palm oil plantation, biodiversity decreased and became vulnerable to forest fires [47]. Kalimantan and Sumatra are areas that are often facing forest fires due to the commercial plantation expansion [57]. It is added by peatland use change to paddy fields that leave the peatland to become vulnerable to fires, especially in the dry season. Farmers’ habits of open agriculture field with slash and burning method also belief contribute to the forest or peatland fires [44,58–60]. However, this assumption is not totally correct due to some experts say that slash and burn for land clearing for palm tree corporations are more likely to trigger the recent forest fires [48]. In rural area, forest fire leads the poverty for those who got impacted due to their crops lost, and in national level, Indonesian economic lost exceed $ 16 billion from this disaster [57].
Deforestation by human activities leads to natural disasters such as floods, erosion, and other disasters; thus, natural resources need to be managed wisely [28]. It is still debatable regarding the climate change issue, but many experts believe this issue is real and affect human life and can trigger a disaster. If the discussion is continued, climate change itself can be categorised as a disaster for human life. Some effects of climate change that are felt by human life include the rise of sea level, the rise of temperature, uncertain rainfall, etc. On some occasions, those effects can lead the disaster such as floods, crops failures, and irregular pest attack patterns on agriculture [41].
Agriculture in Indonesia has many challenges, such as that the majority of the actors are smallholders farmers, input shortage, product price fluctuation, ineffective supply chain, and others [61,62]. The majority of farmers in Indonesia are smallholders farmers facing land scarcity, limited education, low productivity, and profitability [63]. Those challenges are worsening due to disasters that recently occur in various areas in Indonesia. Agricultural risk and rural poverty closely relate to the anti-poverty agenda in many countries, especially in developing countries [10]. Due to natural disasters, volatility of farming income makes expenditure on the important thing become ignored due to focus on the main expenditure such as food [11,12]. People who are at a low-income level are more vulnerable to disaster impacts [64]. People still stay in disaster risk areas, such as volcanoes, because they benefit from the environment, such as more fertile land [37].
Each disaster type has a different characteristic in impacting agriculture, mostly related to the lost crops. The level of disaster impact in agriculture varies depending on the degree of the disasters. Earthquakes or other disasters that ruining infrastructure can disrupt the supply and marketing chain, becoming an important part of the agricultural system [65]. Non-farm businesses also get affected due to productivity shocks and higher transaction costs [33].
Volcanic eruption happens very frequently in Indonesia, including the endless eruption releasing hot ash clouds though in no significant volume. Usually, the impact is not severe for agriculture. Even the farmers are advised to evacuate when they back their crops still can be saved. Still, the effect of volcano mountain eruption in Indonesia is quite severe to agriculture. When Sinabung Volcano erupted, for example, the estimation of destroyed agricultural land was 3,803 hectares with minor damage, 1,337 hectares with medium damage, and 950 hectares with severe damage [66]. Crop loss is one inevitable instant damage by an eruption, but long damage is also affected by the eruption. There are some damages on agricultural land: loss of germplasm that affects the change in plat biodiversity, loss of water catchment area and channel, damaged forest, buried soil, and damaged road access [67].
Earthquake also hits Indonesia almost every year. In 2004, a big earthquake which was followed by a tsunami, hit Aceh [68]. In the following year, the disaster hit Nias in 2005 [65] and Yogyakarta in 2006 [18]. The earthquake itself had a different impact on agriculture. Yet, as long the agriculture is located near the building, the impact of this disaster is not severe for open fields, such as agricultural land. Also, the impact may not be severe as long the earthquake does not create earth cracks on the agricultural field or destroy the agriculture infrastructure such as irrigation or water catchment area. Earthquake in Palu, Central Sulawesi, destroyed 9,718 hectares of agricultural land [69]. This disaster destroyed irrigation infrastructure that leaves farmers uncertain of their future agriculture due to their dependence on irrigation for watering agriculture [29]. At the same time, the water is an important element in agriculture [70].
Landslides often occur in slope areas. Therefore, the effect is observed in the agriculture practiced in slope areas such as in hilly or mountainous areas. Landslide often occurs worldwide, and human activities play an essential role in managing the stability of slope or cliffs [71]. Landslides occur due to the steep slopes, lithology, and unstable soil properties so that the soil is sensitive to erosion and easily landslides [72]. Watkinson [73] added that the earthquake was also triggering the landslide. In Palu’s landslide occurrence, communal agriculture irrigation seems to have an effect on landslide occurrence. An important factor in a landslide is land use. It is needed to predict the hazard potency of landslides toward agriculture [13]. The impact of landslides on agriculture is closely associated with crops lost due to the type of this disaster, which makes the area buried.
Floods often hit some regions in Indonesia, too. Even though with minimum effect inundating the agricultural land, floods will likely make the crops lost [74]. The bigger the flood, the more significant the effect it brings on agriculture. Flood has a strong relation with agriculture and food security. The flood in 2014 in Central Java had destroyed 94,306 hectares of paddy field [8]. This area equals approximately more than half a million rice (rice productivity per hectare is 5.32 ton based on [75]). This huge amount of rice lost for sure has a big effect on food security. West Java also faces floods from high rainfall that inundated 13,234 hectares of the total 166,715 hectares agricultural land [30]. This damages the crops, with almost 70 thousand tons of rice (Rice productivity per hectare is 5.28 ton based on [75]). The impact of the flood on rice fields often occurred and left farmers in desperation condition [17,29]. This disaster is also associated with climate change as it causes such as uncertain rain.
Climate change, then, becomes a hot issue worldwide due to nature exploitation and human greed that lead the issue [76]. The sector that feels much the climate change is agriculture. It leads the uncertain rainfall and makes the farmers difficult to predict the planting time and maintain water availability. This climate change is making worse the current challenge in water availability, where irrigation channel in Indonesia is uneven. Climate change in Indonesia has been felt by many farmers, mainly they feel regarding the crop season that becomes uncertain due to rain season that irregular compare to before, and the decrease of crops yield and dairy [14]. Besides floods, climate change also triggers drought. Drought in Indonesia has occurred since 1811, or even before that. Drought affects the productivity decrease or loss, and it can lead the conflict, especially for the water usage [77]. The sector that uses water not only agriculture, so drought makes water resource management more difficult.
The aforementioned disasters, in the different types and levels, make agriculture become a more vulnerable sector. Disaster that destroyed the farm land make farmers should start over their planting, or they must the wait for the next season to plant again. Road access that has been destroyed by disaster also make farmer cannot distribute or sell their products well. These situation force farmer to the economic crisis and often lead them to the deep debt. Their social activities also become limited due to their focus on their own life. As vital position of agriculture in producing foods, the disaster more likely affects the food security condition [78]. Additionally, it also can lead to poverty for those victims [79]. Disaster risk reduction management is not only for securing human life, but also for securing food security with ensuring the food supply will not be much affected by harvest lost by natural disasters [80].
Farmer’s perception of disaster management is important for disaster risk reduction (DRR) management. This topic has been done by many researchers regarding various disasters such as earthquakes, floods, volcano eruptions, and others [81]. Disaster experiences can improve people’s knowledge regarding disaster risk reduction and lead to a positive perception of disaster mitigation [15]. The challenge in the disaster mitigation program for farmers in Indonesia is that the farmers are dominated by smallholder farmers, where they have limited resources such as financial, land etc. [82]. Their resources are enough for the regular farming activities only, not for other extra activities such as disaster mitigation activities such as involving in paid disaster mitigation education, build evacuation road etc. Agriculture policies should consider the farmer’s preference and behaviour, so the adoption or acceptance rate can go high. It is also applicable for disaster mitigation-related policies [83].
The effort to reduce the impacts, including pre, during, and post disasters, is called disaster mitigation. People need to do something regarding the disasters that they are facing. They cannot only sit down waiting for the disasters and only accept what they get from the disasters. The mitigation activities cannot be accomplished only by one party, such as the victim, but other related parties such as government, private, and communities (local, national or international) must be involved [84]. Generally, disasters affairs in Indonesia are taken under the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management (Badan Penanggulangan Bencana/BNBP). This agency was established in 2008, but some name changes and functions had been done. The function of BNPB is to do coordination in the acts of wholistic disaster mitigations (https://www.bnpb.go.id/). This agency is focusing on all disaster issues.
Speaking of disaster mitigation, the main aspects of it include social, economic, community capacity, institutional, and infrastructure [85]. General stages of disaster mitigation can be seen in Fig. 2, where it consists of three main stages. First is pre-disaster; this effort has the primary function of reducing the disaster risk with preventive actions or preparing from far before the disaster comes, for example, in the form of education regarding mitigation and building infrastructure such as bunker, evacuation road, embankment, etc. Second is during disaster; it can be a form of evacuation and guarding the leave behind properties. Third is post-disaster; this stage is a long effort. For example, rebuild the destroyed area, relocation for settlement, and trauma healing. These three stages have intersecting parts, such as education pre, during, and post-disaster. Infrastructure is also applicable for pre and post-disaster; therefore, coordination from various related parties is needed to make the mitigation efforts successful and reduce the disaster impacts.
Figure 2: General disaster mitigation strategies
In general, pre-disaster risk reduction, as [5] explained, means the effort of using technological equipment, knowledge, and education for disaster mitigation. An early warning system should be prepared for the people to be well prepared when the disaster comes. However, farmers are sceptical of the government forecast on seasonal drought forecast due to less precision of the forecast. This term also can be applied to disaster mitigation. The government or any related stakeholders should give a precise forecast regarding the coming disaster. Therefore the farmers can trust and using forecasts for DRR [16]. The early warning system can come from government, private or local communities. The early warning system is critical to reducing the casualties that disaster might impact [5]. The system can be from the government, private and local communities. In Aceh, for instance, there is an early warning with bamboo that being used by people [86]. In the Mount Merapi area, there is an early warning system through the speakers installed in the village chief’s house. The chief will announce when he gets information from the government or other parties regarding the eruption.
Furthermore, discussing the mitigation strategies for the agriculture sector or farmers become the top matter. This is because, in Indonesia, this sector becomes the majority of people’s livelihood and spread around the country. So, when the disaster comes, the likelihood of agriculture getting hit by disaster is high. How serious agriculture gets impacts from disasters also has been discussed above. Therefore, disaster mitigation at the agriculture or farmer level is essential. Regarding disaster mitigation in agriculture, particularly at post-disaster, BNPB coordinates with the Ministry of Agriculture for relief programs. Below are the findings regarding farmers’ disaster mitigation strategies divided into three stages: pre-disaster, during disaster, and post-disaster.
4.1 Pre disasterDisaster preparedness can significantly reduce the disaster impact. This preparedness is one of disaster mitigation management [85]. The disaster preparedness can be done with knowledge transfer to the people who live in the prone area. They can learn from the experience, but knowledge transfer is still crucial in pre-disaster risk reduction management. Low-cost adaptation technology that farmers can apply is the suitable method to farmers intend to adapt toward disaster [87].
Agroforestry, which is combining crops and trees, is widely practised among farmers in disaster-prone areas. This system can help to protect the crops and land from erosion [88,89]. This farming method also can be used as mitigation strategies for volcano, earthquake, and landslide disasters. In the fire-prone forest area, agroforestry can help restore the land through the trees, and at the same time, this system also provides food through the crops, so farmers can choose to consume by themselves or sell the crops [48].
The farmer culture in opening the land with slash and burn triggers the forest fires [31]. Farmers need to be more aware of their culture, whether the culture is bad for the environment or not [59]. However, recently, there has been a change regarding controlling the burning using drums so that the ash and charcoal can be used for fertiliser for crops. This change can increase land productivity and reduce environmental impacts like forest fire [44].
Farmers believe that swidden cultivation and agroforestry pose less fire risk than large-scale industrial (ex. palm plantation) land clearing [45]. Incentives can help to succeed the program to reduce land clearing by burning the land and settle farming such as rubber or oil palm [46]. The incentive should be on target because not all people that get the incentive can use it properly [90].
A mitigation plan is better using the evidence-based risk assessment, such as creating a hazards map for all disaster likelihood [18]. Figure 3 shows the disaster risk potency in Indonesia. Managing natural resources such as keeping the forest should be done to prevent disasters such as forest fires, landslides, and floods [28]. Flood disaster risk mitigation plans should be adequately prepared and implemented for future floods and consider climate change impacts [17].
In addition to mitigation plans, farmers conduct adaptation toward natural hazards by changing planting dates and crop varieties and increasing the use of fertilisers and pesticides [29,91]. However, overuse of chemical materials should be more controlled not to harm the environment too much [14]. Education regarding sustainable agriculture can be the method to reduce the overused chemical materials. The mitigation education is applicable for all pre-disaster mitigation strategies [18]. Farmers tend to use existing farmers groups to improve their livelihood through improving their farming ability [92]. Farmers group is the place to transfer and sharing innovation, including disaster risk mitigation education can be conducted here with more effective impact [63]. Furthermore, other mitigation education methods use posters, the internet, social media, and other channels [18]. This education is better to be conducted from an early age [35].
The crops’ loss due to disasters is inevitable, but farmers can reduce the economic loss with crop insurance. This disaster insurance for crops can be used as pre-disaster mitigation [64]. This strategy is called risk financing mechanism. Challenges in agriculture insurance include lack of experience from international practices, limited products, lack of necessary data, limited financial capacity, and high administrative and operational costs [93]. Indonesia has an insurance program in agriculture but limited to rice production from crop loss due to pests, disease, drought, and floods. This insurance is called Asuransi Usahatani Padi (AUTP) means rice farming insurance [94]. Moreover, it can compensate for the rice lost up to IDR 6,000,000/ha. This kind of insurance, actually, can be applied for pre-disaster mitigation, not only for rice but also for all crop types.
Figure 3: Disaster risk potency in Indonesia (Source: www.bnpb.go.id)
Disaster management usually focuses on evacuation, logistics or coordination, and is confined to preparedness or response [39]. In addition, a variety of stakeholders with their different concerns make the coordination become intertwined and create mutual benefits, but sometimes also become crash among stakeholders. A quick response is needed during the disaster, but sometimes the early warning system is not working, or some people are not trusting the warning. They prefer to trust their local culture and their instinct regarding the disaster. Nevertheless, recent days show that the awareness of people to evacuate are increasing. Farmers in volcano mountain, for instance, when they have been asked to evacuate, will flee to the refugee camp in the night and will go back to their house in daylight to check the farm and livestock. This trend also happens in other disasters, where farmers still want to protect their farms and livestock. As smallholder farmers, farms and livestock are precious things for them and family.
4.3 Post disasterDisaster is associated with migrations or forced displacement [3]. Therefore, the common post-disaster programs are to rebuild the infrastructure regarding housing, road access to the farmland, and land restoration [18]. Post-disaster land restoration can be done with reforestation for volcanoes and landslide areas [67,95]. Post-disaster land-use change is an inevitable condition. Community forest and fodder grass can be used for post-disaster conserving. Sustainable farming should be promoted to make pre- or post-disaster livelihood more secure [96].
On the other hand, a disaster also destroys the water catchment area and water infrastructure such as irrigation channels. These can be restored by rebuilding the infrastructure and or utilising the government-owned land. After inundation, agriculture rehabilitation is not easy and has been limited by the extensive degradation of land [74]. Post-disaster mitigation is a long effort to bring back the lives that disasters have shattered.
Livelihood is one of the important things to be restored because farmers or people need to earn money and think about how they can live after the disaster. Many people are proactive in finding the livelihood for continuing their lives, such as going back to farm and planting again [97]. In this situation, farmers groups and agriculture-related institutions’ role is crucial in giving assistant and help the trauma healing. Livelihood diversification is a good choice to secure future economic earnings, and livelihood is better than resilience to natural disasters [98]. Agriculture is a sector that provides livelihood easier than other sectors. Reviving the agriculture post-disaster will create or restore the livelihood well [99]. The role of government is needed, which is in providing assistance such as providing seeds or other input to start over the agriculture. However, the rights to receive has to be selected correctly [100].
However, some farmers are shifting their livelihood to sand miners, especially in the aftermath of lava [38]. Change of livelihood often becomes the best way for disaster victims as they need to earn money to keep living [68]. The disaster also urges people to move to the city. Sadly, urbanisation makes the agriculture sector more vulnerable due to a lack of human resources [101]. On one side, urbanisation may be benefiting the disaster victims, but in other side reducing the agricultural actors, farmers. The policy about disaster shifts should also be considered, including focusing on the post-disaster and also pre-disaster. This condition can make disaster mitigation efforts more efficacious [81].
Post-disaster reconstruction needs to involve inter stakeholders, from farmer to private, government, and researchers [31,84,102]. The factor that effecting post-disaster reconstruction are politics and coordination and the pace of the process. The fragmented power makes the mitigation effort become more difficult and less likely effective [56]. Selfish parties that want only benefit for themselves in disaster management should be disempowering with government regulation [58]. People believe authorities and community leaders address the condition in disaster areas; therefore, authorities and communities need to coordinate regarding the best method to make people feel safer and follow any mitigation program or protocol [36]. Challenges in disaster risk reduction in Indonesia include the inappropriate supporting infrastructure, the complexity of inter stakeholders, the dependence of external funds, and limited documentation on material and non-material lost [9].
Social capital collaboration to strengthen the local organisation disaster resilience is important in disaster mitigation [27]. Strong social capital is needed for all levels of mitigation. Collective action is needed for disaster risk reduction management. Indonesia, as an eastern country, has unique characteristics with high collective action [54,103]. Rather than doing everything by themself, many people will lend their hand to help others. The strong social capital of willingness to help disaster relief programs make crowdfunding increasing, which helps people from different places can help various disasters from their own place. In Indonesia, crowdfunding, such as “kitabisa.com” and “indonesiadermawan.id”, is used by many parties to raise funds for helping the post-disaster relief program. This kind of crowdfunding plays a crucial contribution in facing disaster [41], Fig. 4 and 5 show the crowdfunding for disaster supports.
Figure 4: Kitabisa (www.kitabisa.com) for raising funds for disaster relief program
Figure 5: INDONESIADERMAWAN.ID (www.indonesiadermawan.id) for raising funds for disaster relief program
This social capital is very important to support the disaster relief program. Even though the government becomes the main party that plays an important role in disaster hazard mitigation, other parties need to be involved because mitigation management is a complex thing [18]. Moreover, local government capability in disaster mitigation is needed to manage the disaster impact [32]. Some critical aspects in local government capability: institutional capability (such as the government territory and how far the institution can take actions), human resources, policy, financial, technical, and leadership. Indonesia is implementing decentralisation in many governmental aspects, and decentralisation makes most disaster risk reduction management transferred to the local government. Despite this, the objectives are less resolved. Many non-state actors are contributing to disaster risk reduction programs, even though their actions are limited [104] and often lack monitoring, learning, and adjustment [105]. Of course, all mitigation strategies in the agriculture sector should be started from the farmers’ willingness to mitigate [29]. Developing technology for better agriculture can also make post-disaster rehabilitation more successful [106]. Based on the above findings, Fig. 6 is created, to show the disaster mitigation strategies by farmers.
Figure 6: Farmers’ disasters mitigation strategies
Local wisdom is habits that is performed by local people in a particular area; it is commonly found in rural area. In Indonesia, local wisdom can be found in many areas [107]. Local knowledge is important for disaster risk reduction and will be more valuable if combined with modern science. It can provide and expand people knowledge wherein the local level cannot be found [108]. Local people are known to have tacit knowledge rather than explicit knowledge in terms of disaster. This knowledge in local community has increased the capacity of people in facing the disaster [100]. Local culture and religion in Indonesia also have an important role in disaster relief processes or programs [1,34]. People’s behaviours toward disaster are affected by cultural, social, economic and political context [97]; therefore, local wisdom is an important part of disaster mitigation.
To mitigate climate change leading to drought disasters [109], in Java, Indonesia, farmers practice pranata mangsa for over a thousand years [41]. This practice is about the planting calendar that considering the climate. In terms of earthquake, farmers are building houses from wood or bamboo that are more resilient when the earthquake hit. To mitigate volcanic eruptions, landslides, and floods, farmers are practicing agroforestry combining trees and crops; this practice becomes the local wisdom in Mount Merapi area [96]. In Kalimantan, there is also a local wisdom practiced by the Dayak Tribe. When they open the field by burning the forest, they will prepare the water and guard the fire prone area to prevent the forest fire [110]. Furthermore, in Mentawai Islands Regency, some local wisdom is being used by farmers and common people to mitigate the disaster, such as Teteu Amusiast Loga song for mitigating earthquakes. This song contains lyrics that help people to understand the sign of earthquake, such as through the animal sound that indicating the earth quake will come. In addition, the Baduy Tribe practices Pikukuh, which is local wisdom that teaches people to build their house with bamboo, palm fiber, and clay, thus making the house more resilient to an earthquake.
Various disasters struck human life, and agriculture becomes the sector that gets a big impact from the disasters. Farmers never expect disasters, but they need to face them. A typical impact in agriculture is the destroyed crops. To reduce the impacts of disasters, mitigation strategies are needed. Some mitigation strategies are found to be practised by farmers in Indonesia, such as practicing agroforestry for volcano, landslide, and forest fire. Other strategies are change the planting date, apply the insurance and livelihood diversification. These mitigation strategies are divided into three stages, they are pre-disaster, during disaster and post-disaster. Each stage has a specific strategy, but some general strategies can be in more than stages. Local wisdom in mitigation strategies also has been found, where these become a valuable starting point to do the mitigations. Social capital is essential to support mitigation in every stage. Crowdfunding is used by many parties to support and help the mitigation. Farmers’ efforts to reduce the disasters impact will be meaningless without other parties’ involvement, therefore Inter-stakeholder’s coordination is needed to create successful mitigation efforts.
The authors would like to thank to Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta for supporting this study.
