Introduction: Disaster Risk Reduction in Indonesia: Progress, Challenges, and Issues

Indonesia is amongst the countries with the highest disaster risk globally. This risk is driven by the country’s high exposure to a range of geophysical and hydro-meteorological hazards, combined with grave vulnerabilities resulting from population growth, unequal economic development, urbanization, a lack of social and environmental considerations within development processes, and other drivers. Disasters caused by environmental hazards are becoming increasingly costly and severe in Indonesia. While efforts to manage disaster impacts and reduce disaster risk have long been considered, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami transformed the way disasters are viewed and how the risks are managed and reduced. Internationally, the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters was adopted in 2005 and succeeded by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. In order to document the transformations that have taken place in disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Indonesia, this book presents the progress, challenges and issues concerned with DRR governance and practices. It aims to answer the following questions: Which advances in DRR have been made? Which roles do different actors have? Which remaining challenges and emerging new issues need to be addressed in order to enable more sustainable DRR in Indonesia? This introduction presents the rationale, objective and structure of the book.

Indonesia is amongst the countries with the highest disaster risk globally. This risk is driven by the country’s high exposure to a range of geophysical and hydro-meteorological hazards, combined with grave vulnerabilities resulting from population growth, unequal economic development, urbanization, a lack of social and environmental considerations within development processes, and other drivers. Disasters caused by environmental hazards are becoming increasingly costly and severe in Indonesia. While efforts to manage disaster impacts and reduce disaster risk have long been considered, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami transformed the way disasters are viewed and how the risks are managed and reduced. Internationally, the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters was adopted in 2005 and succeeded by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. In order to document the transformations that have taken place in disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Indonesia, this book presents the progress, challenges and issues concerned with DRR governance and practices. It aims to answer the following questions: Which advances in DRR have been made? Which roles do different actors have? Which remaining challenges and emerging new issues need to be addressed in order to enable more sustainable DRR in Indonesia? This introduction presents the rationale, objective and structure of the book.