Bahasa Indonesia: Transparency and reducing dependence on rainfall to help Nusa Tenggara Timur in Indonesia to cope with Climate Change (EN)

Sina Mnune from O wela Timur recalls the days when floods and droughts used to damage rice production. Back then, droughts and floods would often mean shortages of food.

Today, things have changed for Sina. With CARE’s support, the community has diversified its agricultural production. They are no longer only planting rice. Healthy tomatoes, eggplants, salads, chilies and green beans can be found in a community owned vegetable garden watered by an irrigation system.

The community has also built an embankment to prevent recurrent floods from damaging rice production.

The community is using bamboo sticks to prevent erosion of the embankment walls.

Sina has two children. When the oldest finished secondary school, the family couldn’t afford to send him to university. It was harsh times.

Today Sina has also chickens and earns some money from making clothes.

Subsistence rain-fed agriculture is practiced by around 80% of the population of Nusa Tenggara Timur, better known as NTT, a province in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago. Communities are highly dependent on the rain to irrigate their fields and for their water resources.

Scientific evidence has shown that NTT is already facing changes in rainfall patterns. Rain has become more erratic and unpredictable, resulting in greater uncertainty about when to plant and harvest. Peak rainfall in the rainy season has become more extreme, increasing flood and landslide risks. This type of climate is a regular cause for farmers to lose all their production, placing many at risk of food insecurity. Leading to a decline in assets such as seeds, cloths and small livestock. Since these are often sold during times of food shortages.

Changes in rainfall patterns, floods, droughts and landslides, are not the only changes experienced by NTT farmers and fishermen. Biodiversity loss and coastal erosion have also become problems of increasing concern.

Ensuring food, water and fish stocks is a major challenge.

Given that around 80% of the population of NTT relies on agriculture or fisheries for their living, the provincial government has made climate change adaptation a priority.

The Ministry of Environment and the Regional Planning and Development Agency of NTT in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme launched the SPARC project. With support from the Global Environment Facility, the project works to ensure local institutions and rural communities of NTT can cope with changes in climate.

In addition, UNDP and the Swedish International Development Agency are supporting the province to conduct a Climate Public Expenditure and Institutional Review. This exercise will allow knowing exactly how much the government is spending in activities to adapt to climate change. It will increase transparency of the provincial budget, revealing trends and gaps to finance adaptation.

At the national level, UNDP and UNEP are supporting the Indonesian Ministry of Finance to develop a budget tagging system to track financial flows to activities that adapt to climate change. Once adaptation activities have been identified and tagged, the system will be used to rate them based on how effective they are to increase resilience to climate change. It is a way to identify how budget has been allocated, spent, and whether it contributed to increase resilience of communities and ecosystems.

In addition, the Ministry of Environment created a Climate Change Vulnerability Index that makes use of geo-mapping technology to map vulnerability of cities, districts and sectors.

This vulnerability index could be an excellent tool if used coupled with the tagging system. It could allow the government to assign budgets based on vulnerability of areas or sectors improving the life of people like Sina.