Integrating land administration and disaster risk reduction for improved people-land-disaster outcomes: a case study of informal settlements along Jakarta’s Ciliwung River
Creators: name: MULYADI, Mulyadi
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 370903
subject: Natural hazards
classificationCode: 401306
subject: Surveying (incl. hydrographic surveying)

description: The implementation of large-scale disaster risk reduction (DRR) projects, like the flood normalization project along the Ciliwung River in Jakarta, inevitably has land administration implications since these projects tend to coincide with informal settlements that occupy the land without tenure security and despite zoning regulations that prevent development. Therefore, such DRR projects often involve land acquisition and resettlement of exposed households, resulting in conflict. Despite good intentions to reduce vulnerability, DRR projects have impacts on tenure security that result in land disputes, which in turn, hamper the progress and effectiveness of DRR interventions.

Despite land administration’s intersection with DRR, there remains a gap in knowledge around how land administration and DRR should interact to achieve positive outcomes in both areas (i.e., reduced vulnerability and better tenure security). In particular for the Ciliwung catchment, there is limited understanding of how land administration and DRR are actually interacting to reduce both vulnerability and tenure insecurity where people, disasters and land issues come together in significant ways. This thesis, therefore, aims to investigate how land administration and DRR in the Ciliwung River catchment are currently interacting, and how these interactions impact people-land-disaster relationships and outcomes.

The research employs an interpretivist approach, recognizing that participants who perform social actions and give meaning to them, construct the social world. The research adopts a case study method for its empirical investigation, focusing on riverine informal settlements along the Ciliwung River in Jakarta Province, the capital city of Indonesia. The research employed semi-structured interviews with central stakeholders as well as local stakeholders, focus group discussions, and questionnaire surveys of persons at the grassroots level of households.

The initial conceptual framework in this research is based on the literature related to the disaster-land-people relationships. The subsequent interactions between land administration and DRR are conceptualized in this research in the form of a triangular framework. The ‘disaster-to-people’ side of the triangular framework represents an abstraction of state (land/disasters) and society (people/land) relationships in the context of DRR to reduce vulnerability.  The ‘land-to-people’ side of the triangular framework represents an abstraction of state (land/disasters) and society (people/land) relationships in the context of land tenure and land administration to reduce tenure insecurity and land dispute. The ‘land-to-disaster' side of the framework represents a convergence, where effective management of exposure is reliant to varying degrees on both land administration and DRR agencies to reduce exposure.
 
The conceptual framework was applied to the case study, focused on four informal settlements which have a high level of exposure and vulnerability to hazards. Land administration and DRR agencies both play a role in implementing activities to reduce vulnerability; however, these activities remain challenging and have resulted in, at times, limited (or even adverse) outcomes. The research revealed that key dimensions of vulnerability (i.e., the people-to-disaster relationship) were related to planning and development and consequently, liveability. Moreover, the research revealed how the vulnerability of people in the case study areas was exacerbated by insecure land tenure. Key dimensions of tenure insecurity were found to stem from unauthorized land occupation, mandatory movement of people for DRR, recognition of tenure, and land planning status, while key dimensions of exposure were related to natural and human factors. The research found that both the disaster-to-people and disaster-to-land issues were not adequately mainstreamed into land administration and therefore, land administration and DRR as currently implemented have gaps in addressing each of the three sides of the triangle of people-land-disaster.
 
The research found that institutional coordination between land administration and DRR, and better land use planning, could support DRR projects in reducing exposure of the land (and thus vulnerability of the people) without making tenure insecurity worse.  More effective initiatives in land administration to address tenure insecurity could assist the DRR projects to better address both land exposure and hence vulnerability of the people. Therefore, based on the research, potential priorities for improving land administration and DRR interactions were put forward to support implementation of DRR infrastructure projects, resettlement, and enforcement of spatial planning.