Climate Adaptation for Whom? The Unequal Politics of Survival in Urban Indonesia

Abstract

Climate-related hazards, including flooding, extreme rainfall, and coastal inundation, pose increasingly important challenges for urban governance in Indonesia. Adaptation policies often emphasize infrastructure, technological solutions, and urban resilience, yet their social consequences may differ significantly across neighborhoods and socioeconomic groups. This study aims to examine how urban climate adaptation policies distribute protection, costs, and risks among different populations. It proposes a comparative qualitative case-study design involving selected flood-prone neighborhoods in Indonesian cities, with attention to differences in infrastructure provision, tenure arrangements, and household vulnerability. Research methods would include policy-document analysis, spatial examination of publicly available hazard and infrastructure data, semi-structured interviews with residents and local officials, and participatory mapping where feasible. The analytical framework combines climate justice, urban political ecology, and the right-to-the-city perspective. The study would investigate how adaptation priorities are established, whose knowledge informs planning decisions, and whether interventions unintentionally displace vulnerable communities or reproduce existing spatial inequalities. Rather than treating resilience as a neutral technical objective, the research conceptualizes it as a political process involving competing interests and unequal capacities to influence urban development. The anticipated contribution is a framework for evaluating climate adaptation through distributive, procedural, and recognitional justice. By grounding global climate governance debates in Indonesian urban experiences, the study could inform more inclusive approaches to infrastructure planning, disaster-risk reduction, and community participation.