Day three of the Eco-DRR summer course 2017. The participants have surely had a bit of time to adjust to the daily routines by now. First of to start the first session of the day was Dr. Bevaola Kusumasari, enlightening the students about Disaster and Public Policy. On the example of what to do with the problem of people throwing away rubbish in Indonesia, she tried to explain the purpose and meaning of public policy. The main topic of the lecture then crystallized to be the response of the central government to the major disaster in Indonesia during the 2000s which comprises several steps taken towards a disaster management law and disaster management agencies such as the BNPB. Nevertheless, in the light of this development Bevaola Kusumasari pointed to the importance of considering local capacity. This also includes attention given to local culture, making local people appropriate to take action. Another interesting fact presented in relation to this is the religious or spiritual interpretation given to disaster, with the potential of influencing the response.
As it is possible between all sessions, here also the participants had the chance to step outside of the classroom on the sixth floor and enjoy the sun and the view on Mount Merapi even though the top was hidden behind the clouds. The next lecture was led by Mohamad Ali Mashuri, employee of the department of Agriculture from Brebes District on Java. This lecture could be identified as a very practical one regarding its content, which mainly was about the challenge for the district of coastal erosion; negatively affecting the on farming based local economy. He was able to explain measures against this issue by using his own work, which also made it possible to him to support his lecture with videos of a flood. The measures included the building of wave-breakers, sediment traps, planting of mangroves with inter alia so called geotextile “pillows”. A key tool for measuring resilience, the Disaster Resilience Index, was also explained in the session. Following the lecture it was once again time for lunch, which surprisingly succeeds in the task of providing a variance of dishes day after day.
The honor of introducing the afternoon was given to Prof. Dr. R. Rijanta who was talking about community-based DRR. The major content of this lecture was without a question about “diversification”, both related to agriculture and the rural areas. It became clear that agricultural diversification is making the people more resilient to disaster because if there would be a disaster, their livelihood would not be destroyed fully. Generally the diversification, which was described in relation to the case example of Yogjakarta mainly, included the shift from farming into other employments such as services, including the hotel and tourism sector, industry, comprising the craft of furniture, wood- and stonecarving, batik and silver- and goldcraft. What is interesting with this information is that it can be
experienced pretty directly in everyday life in Yogjakarta.
Before heading into the day’s last lecture, the participants were thrown into a mysterious game including “black-magic”, through which some people where able to identify selected objects without knowing that they were selected. Certainly this led to the confusion and surprise of many people, surely being entertained. The last lecture, which unfortunately had to be shortened due to time issues, but which was still performed without any flaws by the
lecturer, was about the experience and facts about the volcanic eruption of the Mount Merapi. The success of this session was to bring everyone in the classroom as close as possible to the events not more than seven years ago. This was made possible through the support of pictures and even a video showing the tragic consequences of the disaster. The participants were surely reminded of their presence in a dangerous place.