Water Dialogues is part of the Building with Nature (BnW) Indonesia program initiated by the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing, Ecoshape Foundation, and Wetlands International. The Building with Nature program built through multidisciplinary collaboration that aims to develop the resilience of 70,000 communities along the coast of Demak, Central Java Province. Resilience is emerging as an important discourse around the world following the significant impacts of climate change. This effort is in line with the 13th sustainable development goal, namely addressing climate change. Demak, as one of the lowland regions, is prone to various climate-related disasters which at the same time also experiences significant population growth and rapid economic activity. Land subsidence arises as another major problem because increased density and activity in coastal areas is do not accompanied by proper water management.
In the process, the issue of land subsidence contributes to the increased vulnerability of coastal communities. To actualizing coastal resilience against climate change issues, efforts to minimize land subsidence are urgent to be implemented, not only for the Demak coast but throughout the north coast of Central Java Province. At the national level, attention to land subsidence issues continues to increase. In 2018, through the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs, the government compiled a roadmap document for mitigation and adaptation of land subsidence in the coastal plains. Departing from these problems, and then initiated an effort overcome land subsidence in the North Coastal area of Central Java Province through the Water Dialogues program.
Water Dialogues has been started since 2019 and aims to develop a roadmap for adaptation and mitigation of land subsidence on the north coast of Central Java Province. This program is a collaboration between the Netherlands-Indonesian to involve various stakeholders in the North Coastal area of Central Java in overcoming land subsidence. The teams that are members of the Water Dialogues program are Wetlands International Indonesia (WII), Deltares, City Initiative for Climate Change (IKUPI), Kota Kita Foundation, Witteveen + Bos, Diponegoro University, and ITB.
The documents could be downloaded at http://ikupi.org/en/water-dialogue-program/