COPING MECHANISM OF SETTLEMENTS ALONG THE RIVER BANK ON SEASONAL FLOODING: THE CASE OF SETTLEMENT ALONGSIDE THE JELAI RIVER, THE SUKAMARA REGENCY, CENTRAL KALIMANTAN PROVINCE, INDONESIA

• Main Authors: , SUNARDI, , Dr. Alberto Gianoli
• Format: Theses and Dissertations NonPeerReviewed
• Published: [Yogyakarta] : Universitas Gadjah Mada 2011
• Subjects: ETD
• Online Access: https://repository.ugm.ac.id/97328/; http://etd.ugm.ac.id/index.php?mod=penelitian_detail&sub=PenelitianDetail&act=view&typ=html&buku_id=53825
• Institution: Universitas Gadjah Mada

Kelurahan Padang, one sub-district in the Sukamara regency, Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia, is the most dense subdistrict in the regency. In addition, most of the settlements in its sub-district are located alongside the Jelai River with houses on stilts that was effective to adapt to such always-watered condition. However, the water level of the Jelai River in peak rainfall season is increasing recently. So, to cope with that condition, households that have enough resources tend to raise their houses or move to the other places. Different with the poor households who do not have enough resources either to elevate the houses or to move to other places, they employ other temporarry coping strategy in facing the seasonal flooding. The main objective of this research is to understand the coping strategies done by poor households in facing the seasonal flooding. Therefore, to complement the main objective, this research also tries to describe the characteristics of the flooding and the characteristics of the vulnerable households, and also to asses the role of the local government in relation to the seasonal flooding in the study area. So, a descriptive and exploratory approach using qualitative method is designed to understand and figure out the coping strategies done by poor households. This research is mainly based on primary data. However, secondary data is also used to complement the primary data to strengthen the argumen. Primary data was collected mainly by interviews with respondents while secondary data gathered through literature study towards government archives and documents. Respondents are 20 poor households living in the study area, one community leader, and seven government officials whose the job have relation with the research problem, selected by purposive sampling. It is found that flooding in the study area is riverine slow-onset flooding, caused by the combination of natural condition and human activities, occured at least once a year in the peak rainfall season with the depth measured from the floor level about 10-40 cm for the duration about three weeks until 1,5 months in each occurence. Furthermore, although it was not causing any injury or death, households in the study area perceived the flooding as nuisance because of disruption on their livelihood/assets. It is also found that generally poor households living in the study area are households who have low educational level, have dependency on the existence of the Jelai River for their daily domestic activities and occupation field, have low daily-based income, and have bad health condition because of suffering from reccurent diseasis. Furthermore, to overcome and reduce the impact of the seasonal flooding, households have applied some coping strategies done before, during, and after flooding, which generally is categorized into economical coping strategies, physical coping strategies and social-cultural coping strategies. In addition, it is indicated that the variation of those coping strategies is influenced by the characteristics of the flooding, the socio-economic characteristics of households itself, and to some extent the local government intervention. The local government has also managed to develop some intervention that can be categorized into mitigation, prevention, preparedness, infrustructure development, and intervention on the disaster impact. Finally, this research proposed some recomendation to improve the livelihood/assets of households so that will increase their rescilience in facing the disaster. Those recomendations are related to improving their housing condition and the quality of the Jelai River, and establishing other resource of income for households.