News Update

First Dialogue Meeting on Land Movement and climate change: "Adaptation to future Land movement threats caused by climate change"

CIFOR, Bogor-Indonesia, 7-8 December 2006

TroFCCA Indonesia in collaboration with relevant institutions tries to minimize the lost that is caused by land movement related disasters in Indonesia. As a result of climate change, the frequency and severity of this disaster are likely to increase in the future. By carrying out vulnerability assessment and promoting adaptation strategy based policies, TroFCCA intends to improve adaptation capacity and climate change related land use management in Indonesia so that the standard of living can be improved and sustainable development can be achieved.

The meeting has objectives of improving communication systems and collaboration among stakeholders and to facilitate the discussion in finding solutions to minimize the lost caused by land movements which tend to increase in the frequency and their dimension under the influence of climate change.

The meeting was attended by 21 participants representing the Indonesian Focal Point to UNFCCC secretariat/ Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Forestry, Center for Vulcanology and Geological Disasters (Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry), Aeronautics and Space National Agency (LAPAN), Research Center for Geotechnology – Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), World Agroforestry, Indonesian Red Cross, WWF Indonesia, Pelangi Foundation, and universities (Bogor Agriculture University, Bandung Institute of Technology, Brawijaya University, and Jakarta State University).

The participants agreed that the frequency, distributions and dimensions of land movements have increased. Climate change had been considered as an important factor in triggering the mechanism of land movements, and characters of land movements could be clustered in relation to rainfall patterns, in particular the length of rainfall period. The participants also agreed that vegetation (land cover) had roles in the mechanism of the land movement. For catastrophic (large) landslides, vegetation has no roles in controlling the land movement. However, types, distribution, age and diversity of vegetation influence the mechanism of land movement. In addition, all participants agreed that Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction had to be promoted and integrated in the disaster preparedness program, that could be used as a basis of an adaptation strategy.

Full report of the meeting (in Bahasa Indonesia) is available here.