After several days of activities including fieldtrip, workshop and the Amazing Race, on the eigth day it was time again to build up more theoretical knowledge on the topic of Eco-DRR. Accordingly the participants came to the University, although not to the normal classroom, but to the larger Merapi Auditorium, due to a larger groups of students also participating for the first two guest lectures. The first lecture was held by Dr. Seca Gandaseca from the
University Putra Malaysia. He definitely succeeded in the task to delivering an informative, as well as entertaining session as it could be observed in the listener crowd. His primary field of expertise is the forestry sector which is why the lecture could be summarized as a combination of just that sector with the key terms vulnerability, disaster and risk. He also made connections to climate change and the influence of humans. While introducing with an explanation of the ecosystem “forest”, he then continued to describe the interpretation of disaster, i.e. that disasters are actually a natural phenomena which cannot be stopped by mankind, but risk can be reduced through people’s behavior. In the next part of the session Dr. Seca Gandaseca explained the term of adaptation and gave some examples of means of prevention and mitigation.
The second lecture was held by Prof. Katsuki Umeda who came from Chiba University. His lecture can be summarized as giving a broad summary of disaster and DRR and its development in Japan during the past hundred years. As Japan can be seen as a strongly exposed country to natural disaster, which was clearly shown through geographical maps, it is not strange that Prof. Katsuki Umeda was able to present a high number of disaster examples. In relation to these examples he presented the development of DRR in Japan, including the improvement of evacuation measures. The whole lecture was very well supported by picture, maps and video material showing the horrific realities of past disasters in Japan.
Before it was time for lunch, the participants did change their location by going to the normal classroom where lunch was standing ready to satisfy their hunger and preparing them with energy for the following afternoon sessions. The first lecture of the afternoon touched upon, the until now, un-discussed topic of gender and disaster and was performed by Dr. Evita Pangaribowo. As most lectures introducing a new topic even here the lecture started by defining the concepts of gender by testing the knowledge of the class. What could be noticed very quickly in this session were the compared larger amount of discussions between the participants and the lecturer. This might have been due to the topic being more of a social question than a nature scientist one. Through the supportive use of little movies and data from the case example of the Tsunami in Aceh 2004, the role and influence of gender in relation to
disaster was explained and discussed.
The last lecture of the day was held by Dr. Rini Rachmawati who did focus on the issue of spatial planning in DRR. It quickly became apparent that the lecture connected perfectly to the past days Amazing Race, which as it also became apparent even was without the knowledge of the lecturer. By showing pictures of disaster prone areas, which certainly reminded the participants on their visited locations and collected material, Dr. Rini Rachmawati did highlight and list the biggest problems and possible solutions for these areas. The day ended by the organization committee providing some information among others about the next day’s fieldtrip.