The Potential of Strategic Environmental Assessment to Address the Challenges of Climate Change to Reduce the Risks of Disasters: A Case Study from Semarang, Indonesia

Indonesia as an archipelagic country is likely to suffer severely from the impacts of climate change since most of its major cities are located in coastal zones. Semarang, a heavily populated coastal city in Central Java Province, is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as it already experiences disastrous flooding and tidal inundation annually, with devastating impacts on the community. Globally, changes in climate patterns are considered o be primarily responsible for sea level rise. The implementation of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in Indonesia, which is at an early stage, provides a framework for assessing and managing environmental risks. SEA may contribute to the integration of climate change considerations into policies, plans and programmes, which is useful to support Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). However, there are some challenges in incorporating climate change into SEA which include capacity building, funding, data problems, integration of SEA into regional planning documents and communication. Some efforts, such as providing training for the local SEA team, expanding the membership of this team by including universities and/or NGOs to enhance the SEA process and engaging the Bureau of Statistics and the Meteorological Agency to support data collecting are some proposed solutions to integrate climate change into SEA in Indonesia in order to improve disaster risk management.