In a coastal community on Indonesia’s Java island, villagers must constantly take soil and stones to local graveyards to secure the resting places of their dead friends and relatives — fearful that frequent flooding will sweep away the deceased.
Like other flood-prone villages in the northern Demak regency, Timbulsloko’s problems are threefold — with over-extraction of groundwater causing sinking, aquaculture contributing to some of the worst coastal erosion across the archipelago, and sea levels rising due to climate change.
The more than 3,000 people in Timbulsloko, who refuse to abandon their homes, often pay for trucks to transport dirt and rocks from nearby mountainous areas in order to protect graves, and to elevate their houses above the rising waters.
“Since 2008, there is more flooding because of coastal erosion,” said fisherman Suratno, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, sitting on the floor of his one-storey house, where the front door was blocked by ankle-deep flood waters.
“Every day there is flooding — the morning, afternoon or at night,” the 51-year-old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation last month.
Located along the Pacific Rim of Fire, Indonesia is made up of more than 17,000 islands, and faces many natural threats — ranging from earthquakes and tsunamis to volcanic eruptions. And the effects of climate change, such as worsening floods, present ever-greater risks to the Southeast Asian nation.
In a bid to protect Timbulsloko, Suratno and other locals took part in a pilot project that sought to reintroduce previously removed mangroves in several villages to rejuvenate and protect at-risk fishing communities and their livelihoods.
Unlike many mangrove restoration initiatives, the seven-year scheme by Netherlands-based environmental group Wetlands International did not replant the trees — which are considered a key defense against flooding and coastal erosion.
Instead, the project — which ended in October 2021 — tapped into expert and local knowledge and manpower to convert degraded aquaculture ponds into green-belts and sedimentation basins to help mangroves regrow naturally and boost fish stocks.
Indonesia is home to the world’s largest area of mangroves — which have an outsize role in absorbing carbon emissions — and the nation is on an ambitious restoration drive. It is a priority for President Joko Widodo, who is due to showcase these efforts to leaders during a G20 summit in Bali later this year.